'Written of by novelists: scripting and managing emotions in 19th-century medical manuscripts

This article frames the bedside as a theatre of emotions, in which Holder’s performance and management of his emotions was key to his professional identity. His literary interests thus provided him with two tools: first, literature provided him with models for how to respond to and record different kinds of medical encounters, particularly deaths, near-death experiences and childbirth; second, his mode of keeping these records, which included the production of poetry as well as medical prose, served as a technology of coping, further allowing him to manage his emotions by exorcising them on the page.

Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Thompson, C. E. Tags: Original research Source Type: research