Week 4

The 3 different lectures we saw all encompassed three different aspects; medicine, science and technology. First off, Lecture one talked about anatomy and art. The first encounter with the anatomy was by doctors who didn’t really know what they were looking at. So, doctors had to work with artists so that the artists could draw correct interpretation of the human body. The first to accomplish this was Versalius. Secondly, Lecture 2 consisted of the human body and medical technologies. This part introduced technology and medicine and one of the first machines used was the X ray. One thing from this section that I found really interesting was the fact that Professor Vesna mentioned that technology was incorporated onto the medical field relatively late. It really only started to be incorporated in the 20^th century. Furthermore, another thing that was really interesting to me was the fact that at one point it was said that if you/ doctor used technology you were not considered a doctor. This reminds me of the reading that we had this week on the Hippocratic Oath. This point about not being a doctor if you used technology has drastically changed just like the oath. According to the reading the Oath was binding and the oath explained that a doctor should not help people die, perform abortion, and have sex with patients. All of which have been removed from the modern oath. In another article that I researched about the Oath which is “The Oath, A serpent and A staff” explains the oath has been “replaced by vague generalities” (American Right to Life). Another article I read was “The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine”. This article, talks about Steven Miles who recognizes that times are changing and he wants to “pluck the oath out of its ritualistic niche, refurbish its meaning and show relevance for modern medical ethics.”(Albert Jonsen). Both the articles I researched and the reading for this week include this notion of time and that before it was ok not to use technology but now it’s a must just like procedures that might seem unethical are a must in today’s society. Lastly, professor Vesna talked about the human body and medical technologies. This section focused on plastic surgery and its emergence. For this week we read about Tensegrity and I found another article that also talked about tensegrity and what it is and I liked that it mentioned art and something else that we have talked about in other weeks. It mentioned math and how the tensegrity model is not just a computational model but a sculpture which uses mathematical models to create the dimensions. It’s interesting because this is something we talked about in Week 2 and now again its being incorporated. (Ingber, Donald- Tensegrity 1. Cell structure and Hierarchical systems). Vesna did not mention sexuality, the human body and art. In Katherine Brokks article “12 Famous Drawings reveal how artists interpret the naked human body” talks about how naked limbs and torsos serve the artists to explore sexuality. Another article that I came across that was interesting because it encompassed two concepts that we talked about was an article on Joseph Paul from the Visible Human Project. The Project was for a good cause but what society did to this man goes against Hippocratic’s Oath because the doctors participated in his death. This article explained why Joseph was in jail but it asked an interesting question which was, would they have chosen this body is they knew that Joseph was killed by Lethal Injection? Overall, all topics were really interesting. 

Picture 1: Drawing of the Human Body 

Picture 2: Hippocratic Oath

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Picture 3: WW1 Plastic Surgery

References:

1.       The Oath by Hippocrates - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html

2.       The Architecture of Life by Ingber D https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/346337/files/26701924/download?wrap=1

3.       The Hippocratic Oath and the ethics of medicine

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200405133502027

4.       The Oath, a Serpent and a staff http://americanrtl.org/Hippocratdic-Oath-Serpent-Staff 

5.       Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology by Donald E. Ingber http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.320.9190&rep=rep1&type=pdf

6.       12 Famous Drawings Reveal How Artists Interpret The Naked Human Body By Katherine Brooks http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/25/the-nakeds_n_5692887.html

7.       The Visible Human Prisoner? By Vanessa Ruiz

http://streetanatomy.com/2007/04/12/the-visible-human%E2%80%A6prisoner/