Dissociation syndromes - scope for misinterpretations

@HealthMed The complex phrases 'dissociation syndrome', 'extinction syndrome' and 'neglect syndrome' embraces a wide range of categories of altered perception from 'out of body' experience to failure to recognize parts of the body as one's own. Causes may include generalised altered perception in response for example to effects of inflammatory cytokines/toxins/prescribed and recreational drugs. And localised altered perception, typically due to a stroke affecting the pre-motor cortex altering proprioception of the affected contra-lateral part of the body or the visual cortex.

Visual perception may compensate for tactile extinction or neglect however patients with these problems find it more difficult to convalesce, for example in returning to normal physical aspects of daily life from dressing to other complex motor tasks. Physicians need to take care to assess for occult visual or other forms of sensory dissociation (or extinction) syndromes in at risk patients.

Psychotic disorders are a further category, either due to endogenous syndromes or to neuroleptic effects of prescribed or recreational drugs. As a caution for patients and health professionals wishing to know more about the syndromes and their consequences, writers have been attracted to this theme and texts may be misunderstood as literal description, from generalised dissociation, to local abnormal perception e.g. Le bras cassé (The broken arm) by Belgian-born French poet, writer and artist Henri Michaux.

With evolving digital repositories meshed with expert multi-focus editing, it will become possible to provide appropriate 'health warnings' for the patient, health professional or casual reader, explaining the complex nature of the work. However, it would not be surprising to discover works largely of the imagination misfiled in factual medical sections in conventional libraries and bookshops.

It is unclear what inspired Michaux to write on this theme, beyond his personal experience of breaking his arm. Or whether his descriptions and text were influenced by the coincidence of his self-declared experimentation with mescalin and other drugs: through long-term effects on his personal perception of his body or perhaps through use of these drugs during convalescence from his fracture.

International perspectives on poetry and medicine

@HealthMed  The Hippocrates Initiative aims to promote individual, collaborative and interdisciplinary interest in poetry and medicine, both nationally and internationally. 

Professor Anne Hudson Jones from Texas and Professor Hugues Marchal from Basel discuss international and personal perspectives on the interface between poetry and medicine.

Their podcast discussion with Professor Donald Singer, co-founder of the Hippocrates Prize, includes use of poetry as a medium for medical and scientific education, historical use of poetry to provide authority to messages to the public about medicines and other treatments, and inspiration for health professionals and students, and for patients and others to engage in poetry on medical themes.

The discussants were contributors to World Knowledge Dialogue 2012 in Villars where the podcast was recorded.

Their comments provide a broad context for the 4th International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine which is now open for submissions, with a deadline of 31st January, 2013. With a GBP 5000 1st Prize both for its Open International category and for its NHS-related category, this is one of the highest value awards in the world for a single poem.

Listen to podcast

Anne Hudson Jones is Harris L Kempner Professor in the Humanities in Medicine and Professor in the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She was a founding editor and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Literature in Medicine (John Hopkins University Press), Associate Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine and has published widely, including a series of essays in the Lancet on literature and medicine.

Hugues Marchal is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Basel University. His research includes major interests in relations between poetry and science from 1800 to the present day. He has taught in the USA at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University, and in Paris at 3-Sorbonne. He has published widely on these themes, including the social context of the times.

More on the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

Information about 2012 Hippocrates Prize

Podcast of BBC interview with 2012 international Hippocrates Prize winner Mary Bush, Texas.

Lancet article on Poetry and Medicine by Singer and Hulse. The Lancet 2010;375:976-977.

31st Jan deadline for 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

@HealthMed

The deadline for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize is 31st Jan 2013, with awards to be announced at the Wellcome Collection in London on 18th May, 2013.

With a 1st prize for the winning poem in each category of £5,000, the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In its first 3 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted around 4000 entries from 44 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia. Awards are in an Open category, which anyone in the world may enter, and an NHS category, which is open to UK National Health Service employees, health students and those working in professional organisations involved in education and training of NHS students and staff. Co-organizers are medical professor Donald Singer and poet and translator Michael Hulse. 

 The Hippocrates poetry and medicine initiative received  the Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts in the 2011 Times Higher Education awards. This award aims to recognise the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that is taking place in universities to promote the arts. Entries were open to teams and all higher education institutions in the UK. Major support for the Hippocrates initiative has come from the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, with additional support from the Wellcome Trust, the Cardiovascular Research Trust, Heads, Teachers and Industry and the University Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study.  

The judging panel for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize is now complete: Jo Shapcott, winner of the 2011 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Theodore Dalrymple, doctor and writer, and Roger Highfield, science writer and Executive for the Science Museums Group.

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life  Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 Costa Book Award. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in December 2011. Jo Shapcott teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name for Dr Anthony Daniels, who has worked as a doctor in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gilbert Islands, London and Birmingham, most recently as a psychiatrist and prison doctor. His writing has appeared regularly in the press and in medical publications, including the British Medical Journal, the Times, Telegraph, Observer and the Spectator. His most recent book is The Pleasure of Thinking.

Roger Highfield is the Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group. He was born in Wales, raised in north London and became the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. He was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. His most recent book, with Martin Nowak is Supercooperators: Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour.


Enter online for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine.


More on the International Hippocrates Prize and the NHS Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine.

New Hippocrates Prize for schools launched

@HealthMed

The Hippocrates Initiative has launched the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets for an unpublished poem of up to 50 lines (excluding the title) in English on a medical theme.

Entrants may be young poets from anywhere in the world who must be aged 14 to 18 years on the closing date for entries - midnight GMT 1st March, 2013.

The first prize is GBP 500 for the winning young poets, with a further 10 awards of commendation for the most highly rated entries.

The Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets will be judged by English poet and playwright Clare Pollard.

Clare Pollard said: “Having my poetry published when I was sixteen altered my life.  It made me believe I could actually be a writer, and vow to work as hard as I could to make it happen. 

 “The great thing about poetry is that age doesn't matter. It's hard as a teenager to find the time and stamina to write a perfect novel, but you can write three perfect verses.  If you put down the things you really want to say about our world, in your own voice, you will have written a powerful poem.”

Born in 1978 and raised in Bolton, she read English at Cambridge University. She published her first collection, The Heavy-Petting Zoo, with Bloodaxe in 1998 aged 19.

Awards will be announced on Saturday 18th May, 2013 at the end of the 4th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine, at the Wellcome Collection Rooms, Euston Road, London.

The inaugural Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets is supported by the UK medical charity the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine and the UK National Association of Writers in Education.

Further information on the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets will be announced shortly.

Enter online for the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets

Website for the Hippocrates Prize

Judging panel for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

@HealthMed  The judging panel for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize is now complete:
Jo Shapcott, winner of the 2011 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Theodore Dalrymple, doctor and writer, and Roger Highfield, science writer and Executive for the Science Museums Group.

2013 Hippocrates Prize judges: Roger Highfield, Jo Shapcott and Theodore Dalrymple

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life 

Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 Costa Book Award. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in December 2011. Jo Shapcott teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name for Dr Anthony Daniels, who has worked as a doctor in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gilbert Islands, London and Birmingham, most recently as a psychiatrist and prison doctor. His writing has appeared regularly in the press and in medical publications, including the British Medical Journal, the Times, Telegraph, Observer and the Spectator. His most recent book is The Pleasure of Thinking.

Roger Highfield is the Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group. He was born in Wales, raised in north London and became the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. He was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. His most recent book, with Martin Nowak is Supercooperators: Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour.

The Hippocrates Prize is for an published poem in English on a medical theme. There are 2 categories in the Hippocrates Prize:  an open International category open to anyone in the world;  and an NHS category open to current or former UK NHS staff or students. 

The first prize in each category is GBP 5000.


Enter online for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine.


More on the International Hippocrates Prize and the NHS Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine.