The Rhetoric of Medicine

If we spend the time to dig deeply into the "rhetoric" of medicine over time, as the authors Nicholson and Selden have done, we find the motivations of early doctors, their foibles and how they perceived themselves. It is an incredibly rich story with lessons around money, competition and autonomy for doctors and for the patients they serve. * Sanjay Gupta, MD, Staff Neurosurgeon, The Emory Clinic, Atlanta, GA, Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN *
Nicholson and Selden offer a pioneering rejoinder to the persistent estrangement of classics and modern medicine. Acutely sensitive to cultural difference, the authors leverage the temporal and technological gulf between ancient Greek and modern American medicine to construct a nuanced and productive juxtaposition: by exposing the fault lines in the self-representation of ancient Greek doctors across an array of key issues, they generate new ways for the American physician to perceive and confront modern counterparts to these very tensions. This is a rare hybrid of a book that couples accessible but consummate expertise of the ancient material with concrete insights for practicing doctors. * Margaret Foster, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Classical Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN *
In this remarkable and wise book, a noted scholar of Ancient Greece and a leading medical educator illuminate several themes that bind together the stories we have told one another across two thousand years of history; the rhetoric that shapes conflicting views of major economic, social, and ethical issues common to the experience of physicians and patients in the age of Hippocrates; and those that still bedevil us in the contemporary era of modern medicine and technology. Practicing physicians, hospital administrators, and those who teach humanistic courses in Narrative Medicine and History of Science are among the many who will find The Rhetoric of Medicine a critical text for promoting the wellness of today's doctors and their patients. * Michael Salcman, MD, Former Chair of Neurosurgery, University of Maryland, editor of Poetry in Medicine and special lecturer in the Osher Institute at Towson University, Towson, MD *
This unique and timely collaboration between a classicist and a physician re-connects cultural and rhetorical threads between ancient and modern medicine... There were good scientific reasons for medicine to modernize itself at the time, of course, but as this study shows, much was also lost in this wholesale break from its ancient tradition. By examining the rhetoric of Greek doctors as they contemplated (e.g., their relationship with patients, their own embodiment or their responsibilities as professional caregivers), Nicholson and Selden make a compelling case that medicine of our own time would benefit from a similarly self-conscious approach to how doctors talk about themselves and their profession... Within programs in medical humanities and bioethics in particular, this book will stand as a foundational landmark. * Ralph M. Rosen, PhD, Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA *