Dr Nigel Nicholson - The Rhetoric of Medicine

Modern medical techniques are used to laser focus radiation on a deep brain tumor, sniff out cancer cells circulating in the blood, and induce stem cells to return to their native or pluripotent state. Surely, the ancient Greek medical practitioners would see all of this as science fiction, yet there are many connections between the medicine we see today and the origins of the profession. In both, the center of the relationship between physicians and patients should be the physicians core commitment to putting their patients interests above their own. 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 todays 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 that were severed well over a century ago. 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 both to patients and a wider public. 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

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To Our Children

This book emerged from a casual conversation at dinner some ten years ago. Nate was amused to run across a brief reference to Asclepius, the supposed father of Western medicine and surgery, which included a quotation from one of the poets central to Nigels research on classical literature, the Greek poet Pindar. Nate shared the reference, and we talked more about the passage in question, which, rather than a celebration of Asclepius, turns out to be a complex and, finally, very negative portrait of him and, by implication, all physicians.

We were struck by what we could learn from each other. The experience of a practicing physician illuminated the complexities of Pindars portrait of Asclepius, while the complexities of Pindars portrait helped to give context to the experience of medicine as practiced today. We wondered if we could write a piece together that explored contemporary practice by exploring the ancient poem. That discussion led to an unfamiliar venture for the two of us, a joint article about Asclepius, Pindar, and money (Nicholson and Selden, Poets, Doctors, and the Rhetoric of Money,