Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

http://www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/diseasedisability.html

Newberry Library
Center for Renaissance Studies
Symposium on Disease and Disability in the Middles Ages and Renaissance
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Ruggles Hall, The Newberry Library

Due to space restrictions, registration in advance is required (see
below).

9:30 a.m. Coffee and continental breakfast

10:00 a.m.

Disability in the Middle Ages

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The "Medical Humanities: Health and Disease in Culture" area for the 2010 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association meeting in St. Louis, Missouri area examines topics related to the portrayal of health and disease in cultural discourse. Proposals representing humanities and the arts (e.g., literature, history, film, visual arts) or social science (e.g., anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, print or electronic journalism) perspectives in historical or contemporary contexts are welcome.

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To understand and effectively navigate the current healthcare debate, every U.S. CEO must now be a healthcare leader.

From the health, well being and productivity of employees and their families to the impact on a company’s bottom line, healthcare is a major business concern for everyone. Five consecutive years of double-digit health insurance premium increases have hit the business community hard.

If we don’t identify new efficiencies in the way we administer employee-based healthcare programs, the negative impact of these costs on businesses will only grow. Healthcare spending currently accounts for 18 percent of U.S. economic output. It could reach 34 percent by 2040, according to a June 2, 2009 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, if the current rate of cost growth continues.

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The puzzle of improving care and reducing costs in American medicine and in vascular conditions (that is, diseases associated with blood vessel metabolism) in particular - these are responsible for 60 percent of all cost - has been in part due to the nature of medicine itself. Physicians are at their core scientists. Our undergraduate degrees are in the scientific disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics. We have been educated in the culture of science and that is the environment in which we practice.

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Posted by: Salvatore J. Zambri, Esquire and Catherine Bertram, Esquire

Obesity can lead to serious health problems.

The latest International Journal of Epidemiologyfeatures a wonderful set of articles for the medical humanist in its "Reprints and Reflections" section. Specifically, the journal reprints Erwin Ackerknecht's seminal 1948 article published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, entitled "Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867." Ackerknecht was Charles E. Rosenberg's dissertation advisor, and is properly considered as one of the founding figures in the professional history of medicine in the U.S.

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Call for Papers:

Imperialism Under the Microscope: Disease, Medicine, and the (Neo)Colonial Gaze – an interdisciplinary essay collection

Among the many imports which accompanied early colonizers to the territories they conquered was a range of epidemic diseases, most strikingly smallpox, which decimated native communities that had never been exposed to the disease and therefore had no immunity to it. Yet, despite the direction in which contagions actually flowed, the imperial gaze soon began to fix itself with terror on the native body as the originary source of infection and corruption. This gaze can be traced well beyond the mass decolonizations of the mid-twentieth century, and survives today in the neo-colonial health practices of many western countries with regard to epidemic disease, especially HIV/AIDS, one of the defining fears of our time.

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Readers of this blog should be interested in a recent entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) on the "concepts of disease and health." It is written by Dominic Murphy, author of a very important book, Psychiatry in the Scientific Image (2006). The latter offers a "qualified defense of the medical model, which says psychiatry is a branch of medicine dedicated to uncovering the neurological basis of disease entities." In other words, for Murphy, psychiatry is best understood as "clinical cognitive neuroscience."

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A very cool sounding conference in New Orleans:

Medical Humanities: Health and Disease in Culture
POPULAR CULTURE AND AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATIONS
NATIONAL CONFERENCE
New Orleans Marriott
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 8-April 11, 2009

The "Medical Humanities: Health and Disease in Culture" PCA/ACA area examines a wide variety of topics related to the experiences of human beings pursuing health and living with illness. Interdisciplinary proposals representing humanities and the arts (e.g., literature, history, film, visual arts) or social sciences (e.g., anthropology, cultural studies, sociology) perspectives through historical or contemporary contexts are welcome. This area emphasizes the pursuit of humane health care and the exploration of the social and cultural contexts in which health care is delivered for individuals or specific groups.

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