Summary:

Brian Dolan has done a great service for the field of medical humanities through his efforts in putting together this volume. Its 19 reprinted articles cover the spectrum of disciplines/fields/methodologies that anchor our work:  history, literature, film, theater, arts, narrative, storytelling, critical (disability) studies, human values, and professionalism. His opening essay, “One Hundred Years of Medical Humanities: A Thematic Overview” very pertinently and extremely ably sets the stage for the remainder of the book. Quite helpfully, authors of “recently published articles,” in this instance from 1987 on, were asked “to reflect on their piece and add introductory comments that would help frame it, or enable them to address issues raised since its original publication” (p.167).  To the reader’s benefit, almost all of those contemporary authors did so.  As cited on the book’s  back cover, the work of some of our field’s most important educators are in this volume, including contributions from Erwin Ackernecht, Gretchen Case, Rita Charon, Jack Coulehan, Thomas Couser, Lester Friedman, Kathryn Montgomery Hunter, Paul Ulhaus Macneill, Guy Micco, Martha Montello, Edmund Pellegrino, Suzanne Poirier, Johanna Shapiro, Abraham Verghese, and Delese Wear. 

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Chaplain-poet Nancy Adams-Cogan's 3rd chapbook of poems complements her earlier work as "a receiver of stories" (p.1). The theme for this collection of 39 poems is dementia and the poems are smartly accompanied by a number of photos by Rod Stampe.  What comes through in these poems is the deep humanity of those who struggle with memory loss—both the individual experiencing it directly and the family members or caregivers accompanying them on their journey. Adams-Cogan captures well the "many faces" of dementia and how those faces "may vary day-by-day-by-day" (p.84). The poet also takes a close look at her aged and aging selves in the poems "Myself in Decline" and "Entanglements."

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Roger Angell, longtime sports writer, senior editor and staff writer for the New Yorker, and a recent inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, gives us a deeply revelatory tour of old age in "This Old Man." Perhaps a lighthouse beam more accurately describes what his thoughts/scenes provide those of us who are younger — some much younger, since Angell is 93 years old at the time of the essay's publication — who are following him to the shores of old age. Through his words and images he provides brilliant flashes of the present, the near past and distant past, allowing us to see, feel and experience virtually his journey to becoming an "elder" (which he playfully places "halfway between a tree and an eel"). Most revealing are his thoughts on his relationship with his failing body, with memory intrusions ("What I've come to count on is the white-coated attendant of memory, silently here again to deliver dabs from the laboratory dish of me"), with being invisible, and with the still powerful need for intimacy, love and attachment.

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This collection,  Jack Coulehan's 5th,  contains 69 poems, almost all of them published previously in medical journals or poetry magazines. Earlier versions of several of the poems also appeared in 3 of his 4 previous collections, The Knitted Glove, First Photographs of Heaven, and The Heavenly Ladder. The book is divided into 6 sections, all (except for After Chekhov), titled after one of the poem's found within the section: Deep Structures, All Soul's Day, After Chekhov, He Lectures on Grace, Levitation, and Natural History. Many of these poems express the tension between order and disorder, the expected and unexpected, and the tenderness and steadiness needed to care for others and our natural world. These works call the reader to open up to the deeper meaning and compassion necessary for the struggle to remain human while caring for suffering humanity.

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The year is 1990; a lump in the groin which Harvey had ignored has enlarged and his wife convinces him to have it checked out. It turns out to be a lymphoma and thus begins the yearlong chronicle. Intertwined with the couple's struggle with diagnosis and treatment is their decision to buy a home, and Joyce's work with an international group of teenagers who have survived war. However, the bulk of this unconventional work depicts in a stark and straightforward way the energy necessary to survive not just cancer, but cancer treatment.

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The foreground of this painting is dominated by a "pieta" type grouping. One woman hovers closely over what appears to be a dying man, while another comforts a small child. This part of the canvas is underlighted. The colors are rich earth tones. The figures are non-Caucasian.

In the background, in harsh light, is a group of identical looking starkly white men. In fact, their faces are almost skeletal. All are in suits, three are seated, with four others standing behind the seated figures. They look very much like a "tribunal."

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The writer Donald Hall gives us a lyrical armchair view through the windows of his house not only of the New Hampshire landscape, but also of his and his anscestors lives lived in that landscape. His honest and moving account from his 83rd year  is captured in the following: "I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two [the ages his wife Jane Kenyon died and his father died]. When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing. It's better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch the birds, barns, and flowers. It is a pleasure to write about what I do" (p.41).

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In the well-written preface, Arthur Kopit describes how he came to write Wings, a play about stroke and language disorder. And he explains there how his fictional account of strokes and their aftermath, "is a work of speculation informed by fact." One fact important to Kopit was that his father suffered a major stroke seven months before Kopit was commissioned by National Public Radio to write an original radio play.

Wings, (which has been sucessfully staged as well) however, is not based on Kopit's father, but on the life of a character, Emily Stilson, who is an amalgam of people, both stroke victims and their stroke-recovered caregivers, from the rehab center caring for Kopit's father. The title of the play refers to an early career of Emily Stilson--she was an airplane wingwalker. Kopit deftly employs the sounds of an airplane in the scenes in which Emily is experiencing a stroke. In fact, the sounds and sights inside and outside of Emily as well as her private dialogue are combined masterfully by Kopit to bring about a high degree of verisimilitude to the chaos produced by stroke.

The play is divided into four sections: "Prelude," the moments before her first stroke; "Catastrophe," her trip to and stay in an institution; "Awakening," a longer section dealing primarily with her struggle to reorient and regain language skills; and "Explorations," where further therapy, including group therapy, and her eventual demise are portrayed.

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I believe the best way to describe this partly autobiographical story is as an illness travelogue. Alexie prepares his reader for a strange journey by making the first stop his discovery of a dead cockroach in his suitcase. This allusion to The Metamorphosis works wonderfully well for the Kafkaesque remainder of the journey.  His bodily journey moves from loss of hearing to possible meningioma to his doctor's proclamation that his "brain is beautiful." His existential/psychological/cultural journey, triggered by his bodily suffering, moves in multiple directions: to time spent with his dying father, his own experience with hydrocephalus, his grandfather's death in WWII, and his loving relationships with his children, wife and brother-in-law.

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Struck Dumb is a collaboratively written play based on the firsthand experience of stroke by one of the authors, Joe Chaikin. Chaikin, when about 50 years old, suffered a stroke during an operation for a faulty heart valve, which left him aphasic. Co-author van Italie, stated that this play "is a theatrical metaphor for the aphasic character's mind: his written thoughts literally come flying in at him from all sides of stage in full view of the audience." In this way an actor who is aphasic and can read, can play the role.

The main character, Adnan, is a "50ish" Arab-American living in Venice, California who has suffered a stroke. The "scenes" in the play revolve around a day in the life of Adnan beginning with "waking up," ending with "sunset," and in between with "practicing words," "my house," "the mall," and other everyday, yet extraordinary, concerns.

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