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For the first time in English, The Russian Medical Humanities: Past and Present argues that the medical humanities is a vibrant and emerging field in Post-Soviet Russia. In a unique collaboration that brings together diverse experts from both Russia and America, this volume showcases the Russian medical humanities as an interdisciplinary project that combines insights from philosophy, bioethics, anthropology, history, and literature in order to provide more compassionate medical care to patients in the twenty-first century. The chapters in this volume explore past and present humanistic trends in Russian medical training, as well as examine how Russian authors and cultural figures, some physician-writers, some without professional background in medicine of any kind, have positioned healthy and ailing bodies in their creative work. This volume's contributors, who range from literary scholars, educators, translators and poets to medical historians, librarians, museum curators, and social workers, provide empathetic insight into the experience of medical encounters which all cultures grapple with. Their work will prove useful not only to current and future health practitioners, but also to a broader audience of readers who are seeking to make compassionate and informed decisions about healthcare for their loved ones and for themselves.
List of contents
Introduction
Konstantin Starikov and Melissa L. Miller
Chapter 1: Physicians' Charity as a Lynchpin in Forming Medical Community
Evgeniya L. Panova and Maria S. Tutorskaya
Chapter 2: The History of the Formation and Maintenance of the Osteological Collections in Russia in the 19
th- 21
st Centuries
Maria P. Kuzybaeva
Chapter 3: The Doctor as a Humanist: An International, Interdisciplinary, and Intergenerational Project at Sechenov University
Jonathan McFarland and Irina Markovina
Chapter 4: Chekhov in North American Medical Schools: Surveying the pre-COVID Attitudes of Slavic Scholars and their Role in Medical Humanities
Konstantin Starikov
Chapter 5: Pauline Tarnowsky and the Russian Influence on Cesare Lombroso's Criminal Woman
Frederick H. White
Chapter 6: Narrative Medicine in Chekhov and Bulgakov
Melissa L. Miller
Chapter 7: Social Cataclysm through the Doctor's Eyes: Vikentii Veresaev's The Deadlock As Diagnostic Narrative
Natalia Vygovskaia
Chapter 8: Wards of the State: Russian Medical Fiction
Angela Brintlinger
Chapter 9: Still Alice, Always Elena: Dementia as A World of Possibility
Jehanne Gheith
About the author
Edited by Konstantin Starikov and Melissa L. Miller - Contributions by Angela Brintlinger; Jehanne Gheith; Maria P. Kuzybaeva; Jonathan McFarland; Melissa L. Miller; Evgeniya L. Panova; Konstantin Starikov; Maria S. Tutorskaya; Natalia Vygovskaia; Frederi
Summary
This volume brings together Russian and American experts to explore fundamental issues in the medical humanities. By examining humanities-focused medical education, health and healthcare, and illness and recovery in Russian culture, this volume presents new insight into what it means to understand another’s pain, to heal, and to be human.
