Writing Homework Help

Section One: Short Identifications. 2 points each/16 point total for this section. Identify the following characters/terms/references. Briefly describe the significance of the term/character and connection to our text (s) or films/class material. Make sure all answers are compared to literature and medicine.

Georges Cuvier:

Marion Sims:

Rest cure:

The Silent Scream:

Barbara Ehrenreich:

Saartje Baartmann:

Section Two: Passage Identifications/Analysis: Identify the following passages by author and text. Trace where the passage occurs in the text and describe the significance of the passage. Consider how it is related to the text as a whole and typical of the work. Closely analyze and discuss the passage describing important motifs and references or critical elements of the argument. Your response should be approx. 1-2 paragraphs in length (longer is OK). 7 points each; 35 point total for this section.

Passage 1: But this bottle of hope was empty. Empty of substance but not of meaning, for as I examined it more closely, I discovered that the bottle resembled a tiny milk container which meant that the whole ensemble functioned metonymically as a breast. If the little bottle stood in for a breast, then the little rosebud was a nipple. But there was more—the bottle/breast also wore a badge: a pink ribbon barely clung to its surface, wanly affixed with a sticky backing. Were they gifting me a replacement sampler for the breast I may have to lose? Now I tried again: was the lil’ bottle filled with the milk of human kindness? And again: could I stuff into the bottle all the words I didn’t wish to hear, and then toss the bottle, rosebud and all, into the ocean?

I couldn’t place, contain or properly receive all this bizarre concoction of signs, suitable to no room in my house that I am aware of, and I couldn’t for the life of me surmise what it had to do with my diagnosis to which it seemed irrelevant. Are people with stomach cancer given trinkets? Or how about cancer of the brain, pancreas, or prostate? What do men get in carefully sequestered wards next door? No doubt a brown manila envelope filled with girlie magazines.

Passage 2: The patient’s account of illness, although it is the first, is not the only narrative in medicine. Oddly enough, in this scientific endeavor, the physicians own discourse about illness takes the form of a story. The space between the patient’s first words to the physician and the physician’s closing recommendation to the patient is filled with patient narratives. They are not just sociable commentary on work at hand, notes compared at lunch or in the halls. Medical stories are a well established way of sorting through and tackling problems or diagnosis and treatment. Even when a patiently comes in with a simple malady, in that brief moment between the patient’s telling of the story and the physician’s making a hypothetical diagnosis, the physician locates its chronological ordering of the details of illness in a narrative taxonomy of similar cases. In such a scientific discipline it is surprising the find this unexpectedly familiar was of making sense of the “facts.”

Storytelling events organize the medical day in a teaching hospital: morning report, professor’s rounds, attending rounds…

Passage 3: I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.

I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time. ‘ So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off–the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life…….

There comes ****, and I must put this away, — he hates to have me write a word.

Passage 4: Like everyone else in the breast-cancer world, the feminists want a cure, but they even more ardently demand to know the cause or causes of the disease without which we will never have any means of prevention. “Bad” genes of the inherited variety are thought to account for fewer than 10 percent of breast cancers, and only 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any known risk factor (such as delaying childbearing or the late onset of menopause) at all. Bad lifestyle choices like a fatty diet have, after brief popularity with the medical profession, been largely ruled out. Hence suspicion should focus on environmental carcinogens, the feminists argue, such as plastics, pesticides (DDT and PCBs, for example, though banned in this country, are still used in many Third World sources of the produce we eat), and the industrial runoff in our ground water. No carcinogen has been linked definitely to human breast cancer yet, but many have been found to cause the disease in mice, and the inexorable increase of the disease in industrialized nations — about one percent a year between the 1950s and the 1990s — further hints at environmental factors, as does the fact that women migrants to industrialized countries quickly develop the same breast-cancer rates as those who are native born. Their emphasis on possible ecological factors, which is not shared by groups such as Komen and the American Cancer Society, puts the feminist breast-cancer activists in league with other, frequently rambunctious, social movements — environmental and anticorporate.

But today theirs are discordant voices in a general chorus of sentimentality and good cheer; after all, breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate America if its complexion changed from pink to green. It is the very blandness of breast cancer, at least in mainstream perceptions, that makes it an attractive object of corporate charity and a way for companies to brand themselves friends of the middle-aged female market.

Passage 5:In sum, medical imagery juxtaposes two pictures: the uterus as a machine that produces the baby and the woman as laborer who produces the baby. Perhaps at times the two come together in a consistent form as the woman-laborer whose uterus-machine produces the baby. What role is the doctor given? I think it is clear he is predominantly seen as the supervisor or foreman of the labor precess. …he “manages” labor. Special conditions require “active management”; previous cesarean section or other complications call forth “expectant management” if a vaginal birth is being allowed. It is of course the doctors who decide when the “pace” of work is insufficient and warranrs speeding up by drugs or mechanical devices….what seems significant is that cesarean section, which requires the most “management” by the doctor and the least “labor” by the uterus and woman is seen as providing the best products. Doctors have created the attitude that cesarean delivery implies a perfect baby.

Section Three: Short Essay. 18 point total for section. Select one of the following questions. Make sure you provide examples from a range of our readings (at least 3). Respond to the question, provide examples from class material, and draw connections between the various readings/examples to develop your short essay. You may include references to readings, films, talks, etc. Your essays should be approximately 3-4 paragraphs or about 2 typed double spaced pages for each question (longer is OK).

1. Discuss the ways that techno-scientific developments have changed the nature of medical care and notions of the body and illness. How have new technologies reshaped our notions of the body and its capabilities? How have technological and scientific interests intersected with the field of medicine itself? Discuss a range of texts in your response (at least 3).
2. A number of our readings have dealt with the relationship between language and sickness, or language and the field of medicine itself. Trace the ways that various authors have addressed the issue of language, as well as metaphor, storytelling, and representation in their works. Consider the ways that language is employed by both patients and medical practitioners. Discuss at least 3 works.
3. Is medicine an art, or a science, or something altogether different? Trace the ways that various authors consider the problem of defining medicine and medical work, and discuss how you would categorize medicine in relation to these works.
4. Trace the ways that ONE of these issues has emerged in our class discussions and readings:
   1. Medicine, science, and race b. gender and sexuality c. the politics of reproduction d. issues surrounding death and dying e. medical ethics