St. Bartholomew’s Hospital By John Graham-Pole, MBBS, MD I wrap my skimpy white coat about me, shivering under the January snowfall as I cross Barts Square heading for the Med-Surg block. Whose idea was it for doctors to don white coats in January, anyway? Is it to give us an air of spotless sterility? Hardly […]
by John Graham-Pole Wellcome Collection Gallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0028932.html It’s the very first day of January 1967. My first internal medicine internship begins this frosty Monday morning under the shades of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the city of London. Right now it’s 7:46 AM and I’m making my familiar way from the medical college across West Smithfield […]
by Dorothy Lander One hundred and seventy civilians, mostly schoolchildren, in southern Iran will never eat another morsel of food. The deadly bombing of a primary school in Minab in southern Iran by the United States Military Tomahawk missiles—twice so no accident— on February 28, 2026, swept me back to our Antigonish-based book launch this […]
by John Graham-Pole I’ve been reflecting on words I rarely heard during my fifty-plus years of medical practice. Words I was especially drawn to in later years, when making rounds, when writing chart notes, especially when listening and responding to my patients and their families. These are some of the words I’m thinking of: purpose, […]
By John Graham-Pole For more than three decades, the University of Florida’s Arts in Medicine program (AIM: artsinmedicine.ufhealth.org) has brought visual, literary, and performance artists into the hospital’s wards and clinics. Its mission has been simply to enrich the experience of patients and caregivers through countless forms of creative expression. When my nurse colleague […]
If children being treated for cancer can give themselves a boost of healing humour, then let’s all of us follow their example.
Artmaking always uses imagination, that magical quality which seems to single us humans out as unique from every other living being.
Sir Joseph and me, September 2024, Thinkers’ Lodge, Pugwash, Nova Scotia In 2010, Dorothy and I were visiting our stepdaughter Cathy in Pugwash in Northern Nova Scotia, where she was living in the Sunset Community, a centre for people with disabilities. We came upon her pulling weeds outside the library and we ventured inside. My […]
Aboriginal Rock Mural Kimberley Region, Western Australia Posted by John Graham-Pole I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I can tell you a story. It’s 1960, and I’m entering St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in the city of London on a quite unlooked for scholarship in Classical languages. It’s true I’ve been […]
