Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"
Like a shower of gold falling on a fertile landscape, the work expresses the ecstatic joy of two lovers united. But at a second glance the message is not quite so clear.
Intrigued? Every week the cover of the Journal of the American Medical Association is devoted to a different work of art. An essay about that work appears within the issue. Read the full JAMA Cover Essay on "The Kiss" here.
Browse more cover essays going back to the 1964 here.
Anton Chekhov
And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.
--Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
Chekhov was Russian physician, playwright, and short story author who wrote extensively about medicine in his creative work. View an annotated list of Chekhov's works here.
Find more literature with themes of medicine and healing here.
Edwin Smith Papyrus
Unscroll the world's oldest surviving surgical text. The Edwin Smith Papyrus was written in Egyptian hieratic script around the 17th century BCE, but is probably based on material from a thousand years earlier.
View the papyrus and other rare and ancient medical sources here.
Portrait of Dr. Gachet
Dr. Gachet and Van Gogh enjoyed a dual relationship as doctor and patient and as friends....From a medical standpoint, this portrait deserves analysis for its insight into the strength of a particular doctor-patient relationship, and for the recognition that doctors are quite often also patients--doctors may suffer from problems similar to even those that they treat.
Find more medical themed visual art with commentaries here.
For additional sources on these subjects, search Discovery. Try some of these subject terms "Literature and Medicine," "Medicine in Literature," "Healing in Literature," or "Medicine in Art"
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