Introduction to Medical Humanities

This book proposes an integrated and interdisciplinary approach recording and interpreting the human experience of illness, disability, care, and medical intervention. In our age of deeply technologically-driven medicine, it is crucial to re-establish and promote the neglected relationship between medicine and the arts. This textbook contains contributions by scholars in various fields, who offer their qualified insights in order to reflect on illness, medicine, and the role of physicians and nurses. All chapters overcome a reductive conception of a medicine that is only able to biologically explain illness.

All three editors of this book are researchers in Padua, a city that has been described as the cradle of modern medicine. From Gabriele Falloppio to Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente and Giovanni Battista Morgagni, human, normal and pathological, anatomy has taken big steps forward. Galileo Galilei taught for eighteen years at the University of Padua  and developed the scientific method there. During the same period, Padua was also the “nursery of arts”, as Shakespeare wrote. In fact, Padua developed, especially in the XIV, XV, and XVI centuries, an impressive and unique artistic culture thanks to artists such as Giotto, Donatello and Titian. Finally, the city of Saint Anthony is a place where a religious feeling strongly oriented towards charity is deeply rooted and strictly linking its history to that of its hospital. For all these reasons a combination of medical humanities and Italian artistic heritage is of interest to anyone involved in bioethics and medicine. This textbook is a unique resource for students of medicine, nursing, bioethics, psychology, theology, and history of art.

Prof. Renzo Pegoraro graduated in Medicine at the University of Padua (1985). He studied Philosophy, Theology, and Bioethics, in Padua and Rome. In 1993 became Professor of Bioethics at the Faculty of Theology of Northern Italy and General Secretary of the Fondazione Lanza in Padova (Center of Advanced Studies in Ethics, Bioethics and Environmental Ethics). President of the Research Ethics Committee of the Venetian Institute of Oncology. 1998-2013 member of the Board of the European Society of Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH) and served as President in 2005-2007. Member of the Bureau of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) and served as President between 2010-2013. He is a member of the International Association for Education in Ethics (IAEE). Since 2011 he has been Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome. He has published articles in journals and books on different issues in Biomedical Ethics, particularly on religion and bioethics, human experimentation, organ transplantation and clinical ethics.  

Prof. Luciana Caenazzo is Associate Professor in Legal Medicine at the University of Padua (Italy). She has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Ethics and Consultation. Her research regards the personal identification in paternity analysis and biological stains by means of the study of DNA genetic markers and the application of the personal identification in the forensic field (Forensic Genetics) and for clinical purpose as the determination of sex with the techniques of molecular biology, and the follow up on the patients undergoing marrow transplantation. Her research interests also comprise: ethical questions of genetics, forensic genetics and justice, ethical aspects of the clinical use of genetics. In the last years, she also focused on ethical and legal aspects of governance in biobanks. On these last topics she has been collaborating with the Fondazione Lanza (Padova. Italy).

Dr. Lucia Mariani achieved a B. A. in Human and Social Sciences (1992) - Major in Arts and Human Geography - and completed her Ph.D. program on “Man and Environment” in 1996. Her main field of activity has developed over the years, thanks to her continuous collaboration with the Fondazione Lanza, and it has been focusing mainly on Ethics, Bioethics, Medical Humanities, Arts, and Environmental issues. Her knowledge and expertise have been useful in the organization of international meetings and in the translation, editing and collecting of original material that has been published in several books. She is also the Coordinator of the Fondazione Lanza Research Project “Ethics and Emerging Technologies: a Population-based Health Monitoring Project”