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ART & MEDICINE

ries, however, are often unwittingly de-humanized in the sense that from it undermine the important role that the humanities and arts
they are depicted as lacking the socioeconomic complexity and should play in medical education. Engagements with art and the hu-
agency of persons situated in the cultural milieu of the world. The manities promote uses of the mind that challenge the habits of
unintended message of this representation—which is provided by knowing that de-humanize us: they involve us in an epistemic defa-
us educators—is that the patient-person to be regarded as a bio- miliarization through which we remember how to understand others
logical puzzle to be solved through tests and scans whose results and ourselves as persons.
may be discussed and acted upon by medical professionals. One In his famous dramatic monologue “Fra lippo lippi,” Robert
story after another—all the cases of medical school, provided by browning gives us the humorous, endearing portrait of the very
us medical educators—promote habits of understanding that pa- flawed painter-monk, who in spite of all he says that we might dis-
tients are to be regarded as utterly passive biological puzzles that trust, does speak a testimony to the role of artists that is surely one
we, with some considerable satisfaction, can solve. The unrecog- of the most moving and true accounts. What we, in medicine, have
nized habits of our teaching promote a hidden curriculum we do passed by “a hundred times nor cared to see” are our patients, in
not intend. While we desire to teach our students to regard patients their humanity. Artists can remind us of how to see—can call us
as persons and to treat them with compassion, our stories instill back to the vision we hoped to have all along:
habits of regarding patients as otherwise. And these habits get re-
inforced through systems of practice whereby patient identity is For, don’t you mark? we’re made so that we love
constructed by means of codes in an EMR, test measurements,
and an array of scans. First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Such habits have serious consequences, and not only for the pa- Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
tients who—in spite of the clearly positive benefits that can arise
through systemic efficiency—feel treated like objects of study. The And so they are better, painted—better to us,
de-humanization of the Other in a relationship leads to the de-hu- Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
manization of both; and for those who came to medicine motivated
by a profound yearning to share in compassionate, altruistic rela- God uses us [artists] to help each other so . . .
tionships of healing, such de-humanization spells the utter destruc-
tion of the raison d’etre and the foundational aspiration of students: Art helps us to see and treasure what we’ve forgotten to look for.
the calling to pursue the vocation of healer. True, absolute, literal
de-moralization ensues, manifest in symptoms of burnout, depres- Mark Clark is an Associate Professor of Medical Human-
sion, and suicide. In the vacuity of meaning, where one loses sight ities at the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteo-
of the purpose of human being, despair establishes its empire. pathic Medicine. His PhD in English literature has led to a
Often, the medical humanities and engagements with the arts are career trajectory of using his expertise in narrative and rhetor-
regarded as a kind of intellectual recess—a break, at best, a disrup- ical theory, the humanities, and the arts to examine medical
tion, at worst—from the rigors of studying scientific medicine. This practice and to optimize the processes of Professional Identity Formation in
tragically mistaken assessment and the curricular decisions that arise medical education.

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