Rafael Campo, MD
Physician and Poet
Harvard Medical School
Abstract: The earliest of civilizations, from many Native American cultures to that of Archaic Greece, recognized an inextricable interrelationship between poetry and therapeusis. Yet in modern American medicine, too often seductive technologies and scientific hubris distance physicians from the afflicted, whom we treat as dehumanized patients. This lecture examined the profound connections between creative self-expression and healing, and contrasted a humane “biocultural” narrative of the illness experience with today's unfeeling biomedical understanding of disease. Dr. Campo considered how poetry has an especially important role in medical education, in illuminating questions about empathy and compassion, sparking cross-cultural understanding, bearing witness to suffering, de-objectifying and celebrating the sensual, physical body, confronting and embracing uncertainty, and exploring end-of-life issues.
Medical Humanities Mondays Series