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Posts tagged disease

22 March 2010
image An iconography of contagion
image
"Discover the Unknown Spreaders!," 28 x 39cm print, National Tuburculosis Association, United States, c.1940, from the exhibition An Iconography of Contagion, US National Library of Medicine, February 2010 :: via MetaFilter
The National Institutes of Health has an online exhibition of 20th century health posters from various countries, key-coded by different common visual motifs (hands, mouths, skulls, rodents, sinister blobs). Many of the posters present an odd mix of informativeness and fear-mongering; quite a few traffic in stereotypes of disease and contagion (and diseased/contagious people) that read uneasily in the present day. This anti-TB admonition is one of the cheerier examples.
re: disease, icons, posters, public health, stereotypes
Nate:
29 September 2009
photo HIV, by Luke Jerram
photo
"HIV," 22cm, from the sculpture series Glass Microbiology, by Luke Jerram Smithfield Gallery, London, 22 September–9 October 2009 :: via Freakonomics Blog
Nearly all the images we see of viruses use false coloration, either for illustrative or aesthetic purposes. Glass sculptor Luke Jerram makes clear, colorless models of viruses and bacteria, working in consultation with microbiologests and under the glass-given physical constraints of gravity and fragility. The resulting works (including all the big names: E. coli, swine flu, Ebola, smallpox, and HIV) are stunning and sobering. Jerret's website quotes a note he received from an unnamed viewer: "I just saw a photo of your glass sculpture of HIV. I can't stop looking at it. Knowing that millions of those guys are in me, and will be a part of me for the rest of my life. Your sculpture, even as a photo, has made HIV much more real for me than any photo or illustration I've ever seen. It's a very odd feeling seeing my enemy, and the eventual likely cause of my death, and finding it so beautiful."
re: art, color, disease, glass, horizons of the possible, medicine, science, sculpture
Nate:
14 July 2009
excerpt Music, walking, and the power of presence
One of the paradoxes of Parkinson's disease is that it seems to build up in its sufferers both an extraordinary need to act, and a simultaneous blocking of action. Medications, like the L-DOPA made famous in Oliver Sacks' 1969 account Awakenings, can get many such patients 'unstuck' (though it's more harrowingly complex than just that). But sometimes the unblocking can be brought on by seemingly far subtler treatments: by music, by the visual cues of another person's normal gestures.
re: brain, disease, gestures and postures, medicine, music, presence, walking
Nate:
from Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks, p.248 (1983 epilogue)

One patient, who was so eloquent on the subject of music, had a great difficulty in walking alone, but was always able to walk perfectly if someone walked with her. Her own comments on this are of very great interest: ‘When you walk with me,’ she said, ‘I feel in myself your own power of walking. I partake of the power and freedom you have. I share your walking powers, your perceptions, your feelings, your existence. Without even knowing it, you make me a great gift.’ This patient felt this experience as very similar to, if not identical with, her experiences with music: ‘I partake of other people, as I partake of music…’

10 November 2008
repost Crazy in the same way?
This reminds me of a very fascinating/disturbing piece, "A New Way to Be Mad," that ran in the Atlantic a few years back. When I think about these instances of disease (or description of disease) as a deeply cultural phenomenon, the phrase that invariably springs to mind is, "The Spirit of the Age." It seems apt.
re: cultural worlds, disease, horizons of the possible, illness, medicine, psychology
Nate:
"The Evolution of Delusions," the VSL Science post for 5 November 2008

Does the nature of psychotic delusions change over the centuries? Or are “crazy” people crazy in the same ways regardless of where and when they lived and died?

Slovenian researchers analyzed more than 120 years’ worth of patient reports from the Ljubljana mental hospital, and their findings suggest that psychotic delusions are profoundly shaped by contemporary society, with the technology of the day—be it the telegraph or the television—playing a prominent role. The researchers also found that the “persecution delusion” (a paranoid narrative in which the subject feels hounded by evildoers) is a relatively modern phenomenon: a reaction to the possibility of nuclear war and to Cold War conspiracy flicks like The Manchurian Candidate. In this sense, schizophrenic delusions are a twisted mirror to the world we live in.