realtion between art and medicine, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Medicine

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Mujtaba Abdulrasool

Ahmed AL-Adilee

Ali Rahmanpour

Moein Mortazavian

Relation between art &

medicine

 (^) The combination and mutual enrichment of literature and medicine are not so strange as they seem. The connection between them can be tracked back to the mythology of ancient Greece, which identified Apollo as god of music, medicine, and poetry. Even without expertise in all of literature or medicine, which today is probably impossible, we can find correspondence between literature and medicine in several areas.  (^) In this article we are going to discuss the effect of medicine on art in two contexts:

1. The effect of medicine on visual arts
2. The effect of medicine on literature

 (^) Sculptures from ancient Greece reveal that classical artists closely observed the human body. Ancient Greek artists focused their attention on youthful bodies in the prime of life. Ancient sources indicate these artists used models to help them study the details of the body in the way that it looked and moved. These artists tried to show their viewers that they understood systems of muscles beneath the skin.  (^) The Archaic Greek period spanned approximately 170 years, to the start of the Classical period. The anatomy in Greek art can be studied both from a morphological as well as a stylistic approach. Leonardo da Vinci coined the phrase “ Sapere come vedere ” — to know how to see. For fuller appreciation, one needs to see not only what is apparent to the eye, but also to understand the use of the human form—the medium—to convey the message of the work of art. The evolution in style from the early specimens to later ones can be attributed to advances in the Greeks' knowledge of anatomy, the acquisition of sophisticated sculptural skills, and the urge to express more complicated feelings and emotions through anatomy.

2. The renaissance era:  (^) To be an artist during the Renaissance was, for many, to be an anatomist. As European artists turned towards more lifelike portrayals of the human body, they needed a deeper understanding of how the structures of the body worked together - and not only the surface of the body; the muscles and bones as seen  (^) through the skin were also of interest. Artists and anatomists worked together to investigate the body through dissection. They produced images of the body that combined medical knowledge and an artistic vision of humanity's place in the world.

Leonardo da vinci:  (^) Leonardo da Vinci, who lived from 1452-1519, is well known for his anatomical sketches of the human body. He would dissect dead human remains and then draw what he saw. Dissection was completely illegal unless one was a physician, which da Vinci was not. It is believed that da Vinci would get a grave robbers, and eventually a hospital director to get him cadavers to study. da Vinci hid all of this anatomical drawings and kept them secret because of the illegal nature of what he was doing. He was able to identify not only muscles and bones, but also their functions in the body, which was an incredible breakthrough. Sadly, he was not able to share any of this knowledge with others, once again, because of the illegal nature of what he was doing. da Vinci believed only that in which he could observe, which is probably one of the reasons he resorted to dissection to learn more about the human body. He dissected bodies illegally at first, but eventually got special permission from the catholic church to dissect and sketch what he learned for a medical book. This is when he started to use the hospital director to get him bodies. Eventually, the hospital director got much ridicule over doing this and forbade dissections. As an artist and a great mind, da Vinci saw it important enough to ignore the law and study human anatomy via dissections. His deviance led to a better understanding of the human body, and is an important footnote in medical and art history.

Anton Chekov  (^) Anton Chekov is one of the scientists ( doctors ) who made a bridge between medicine and art.  (^) Lets read a little about Anton Chekov… He practiced medicine during most of his literary career but officially retired from the medical profession in 1889. Despite this, he continued to provide free care in Melikhovo and often dabbled in public health initiatives. But what is perhaps most attractive about his medical career is how he bridged medicine and literature. He is quoted saying, “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature my mistress.”

 (^) His fascination with medicine, he unreservedly explored in his literature. To say that he created over a hundred fictitious physicians is perhaps only a small testament to his interest in unpacking the medical profession through literary means. He also used his medical competency to richly write about tuberculosis in “Late Blooming Flowers”, typhus in “Typhus”, and many other evocative scenes of medically urgent occasions. His dark descriptions, often besotted with reflection over medical attitudes explains why he wrote such aphorisms: “People who have an official, professional relation to other men’s sufferings, for instance—judges, police officers, doctors—in course of time, grow so callous, that they cannot, even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to their clients, in this respect they are not different from the peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in the backyard, and does not notice the blood” –Anton Chekhov in Ward No. # 6.

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