Medical humanities among the healing arts?

Abstract

In summary, then, the matters implicit in a number of the articles in this issue of Medical Humanities prompt us to qualify our understanding of the territorial division between arts in health and the medical humanities as such. Useful though the operational distinction is between the two, there are at least two general reasons for treating that distinction with caution and scruple. These are, fist, the extent to which the arts in health are porous, capable of admitting numerous and surpising additional members; and, second, the extent to which medical humanities secures - indeed, even aims at - an indirectly therapeutic effect, when the education, reflection, and analysis which are its direct business lead on subsequently to gains in the nature of patient care. Therefore the lessons we draw from this are twofold: first, the importance of accepting the diversity of approaches not merely between but also within both arts in health and medical humanities; and, second, the importance of a central project implicit in both, namely gaining a better understanding of the role of imagination and creativity in comprehendling the relationship between arts and sciences in medicine and health care.