Remaking Our World; Making the World More Human

Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, from The New Medicine, eds. Ronald H. Blummer & Muffie Meyer.

Dr. Kleinman advocates for the opportunity that patients and doctors have to "reaffirm their humanity:"

[With] the understanding that life is important not just for the repairing of our broken bones and the fixing of our broken hearts, but because we deal with what is serious, what is most at stake for us, what matters most in living [...] two people [doctor and patient] have the rare privilege of coming together in the context of that interaction. (111)

This realized interaction is  “a fantastic way of remaking our world, of making the world more human."

The Biology of Hope

Jerome Groopman, Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, from The New Medicine, eds. Ronald H. Blumer & Muffie Meyer

Dr. Groopman advocates that hope is central in the experience of illness and in the path to healing (98):

People often confuse hope with optimism. Hope is different. Hope is clear-eyed. It sees all the reality that you face, all the obstacles, all the problems, all the potential for failure. But through that, it sees as well a possible path to a better future. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s possible. (98)

Hope is realistic because it sees medicine for what it is; as an uncertain art.  When physicians stop cutting themselves off from their patients’ emotions, medicine becomes an art, not just science. (98-99)

Healing means that the patient is made whole again, emerging from the experience of illness having been restored as a person. (98)

There is “a biology of hope” and this has a powerful effect on the body. (99)