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`Medical humanities'—what's in a name?

Centre for Philosophy and Health Care, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, Wales

Correspondence to:
Martyn Evans;
h.m.evans@swansea.ac.uk

Keywords: Medical humanities; education; arts in health; intrinsic benefits; instrumental benefits; intellectual inquiry

What's in a name? The question has preoccupied both ancient philosophers and modern corporations, albeit for conspicuously different reasons. Standing between them both historically and culturally, Jane Austen drily considered the question through Miss Caroline Bingley's suggested improvement to the ball which her brother proposed to host: "` . . .there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day'.

"`Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball'."¹

The inaugural meeting of the Association of Medical Humanities was held in Birmingham in February 2002, and a good deal of discussion on that enjoyable and productive day was in time-honoured tradition devoted to the association's proposed name. Notwithstanding the discouraging precedent of Miss Bingley's attempt . . . [Full text of this article]