Health Humanities, Influence on and by Phenomenology

Introduction

Health Humanities is a term that has been used for the past 10 years to describe a broad field within the humanities. Because researchers who identify with this field come from a variety of disciplines, the description of the content of this field and its demarcation from other disciplines is not clear-cut. What everyone does seem to agree on is that Health Humanities are a critical complement to Medical Humanities. Therefore, let us first briefly discuss what is meant by Medical Humanities, a field that emerged in the 1970s. Contemporary medicine, from the nineteenth century onward, has evolved from “bedside medicine” to “laboratory medicine,” with the person who is ill disappearing increasingly into the background (Jewson 1976). With expanding technology and automation in the second half of the twentieth century, there has been less and less focus on the patient’s story and voice. Even though it is often said that medicine is both science and art, the last decades of...