Humanities resources to support healthcare professionals and patients
William Carlos Williams. The baby is in a smother of sheets and crumpled blankets. Its left eye closed, its right partly opened. It emits a soft whining cry continuously at every breath. It can’t be more than a few weeks old. Will it live? It is the mother: a great tender-eyed blonde. Great full breasts. Read More …
The demonstration in Seattle 1960-3 that the new technique of dialysis could prolong the lives of patients with end stage renal disease led to a crisis. Both of provision – it was expensive – and ethical. Who should receive this scarce treatment? An age range of 18-45 was considered at first in Seattle, but soon Read More …
The fortunate man here is the doctor. Sassall meets anguished patients on his rounds – the close relatives of the dying, those who are ill and want to die, the immobilized who are made desperate by a kind of claustrophobic fear of their own bodies, the insanely jealous, the lonely who try to kill themselves, Read More …
Verbal transcription 6am. The wife: About an hour ago. He woke up and it was as if a knife was sticking in his side. I tried the old reliable, I gave him a good drink of whisky but this time it did no good. I thought it might be his heart so I … Yes. Read More …
Ian Rankin. I don’t really blame people for shunning the dying. I try to do it myself, not physically but mentally by painting other pictures in my head. My mother has perhaps less than a week to live. If what she’s doing now is living. Not living, just there. At least I can go to Read More …
Commentary Thom Green is drummer for Alt-J – and has kidney failure and a transplant, and deafness, all caused by the inherited condition Alport Syndrome, which came on in his teens. In short videos he talks about the shock of dialysis, how different living with a transplant is, and about his (deceased) kidney donor. There’s Read More …
and a desperate parent. Erlkönig by Schubert and the Erlkings. Who rides through the night so late in the wild It is a father with his only child He holds him tight He holds him warm O father can you see The Erlking is near The evil Erlking with eyes burning red O father, O Read More …
It was as the snow started falling that she blurted it out not meant for the kids, not meant for here, for the snowwoman with her pink hat and old carrot nose, And once it was out she wished she could call it back in, like a dog you could whistle to, but it wouldn’t, Read More …
I was as fearful of failing as I had been with my A-levels, but there was also a terrible sense of unease about what was happening to me, to which I couldn’t put a name. As I prepared for my finals, with my mind map, and my chart of each available hour, there came a Read More …
A dying child in rural Russia in 1916, by Mikhail Bulghakov. At eleven o’clock that night a little girl was brought. The mother’s face was contorted with noiseless weeping. When she had thrown off her sheepskin coat and shawl and unwrapped the bundle, I saw a little girl of about three years old. For a Read More …