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.