title: The Jeremiah Metzger Lecture. Humanities in medicine: treatment of a deficiency disorder.
abstract: Al Jonson pointed out that Sir William Osler provided one of the best rationales for Humanities in Medicine (21, 65). In 1919, in one of Sir William's last lectures given just a few months prior to his death, a lecture to the British Classical Society, he discussed how the sciences and the humanities can inform each other. He compared the humanities to thyroid hormone-thyroxine had just been discovered in 1914-"a hormone...," Sir William said, "...which lubricates the wheels of life... Deprive man of the lubricants ... and ... he sinks into dementia..." And so to the Classical Society, Sir William said, "You secrete materials which do for society at large what the thyroid gland does for the individual. The humanities are the hormones..." And Al Jonsen suggested that we in Medicine reaffirm Sir William's metaphor that the humanities are the hormones which will do for medicine what they do for society at large.
authors.affiliation: Program of Humanities in Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, USA.
authors.forename: E W
authors.initials: EW
authors.lastname: Hook
mesh_terms: D002359:Cartoons as Topic; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000266:history / Q000379:methods*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006809:Humanities / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D014481:United States