John Robert Cobb was a renowned orthopedic surgeon who left an indelible mark on the field of spine surgery, thanks to his contributions to scoliosis research. He defined the Cobb angle, medicine’s most widely referenced measurement of spinal deformity. He also graduated from Brown University in 1925 with a degree in English Literature.
Scientific history is rich with such examples of physicians who intertwine their passions for medicine and the humanities, said Ashley Knebel ’22 MD’27. In fact, for Knebel, Diana Wang MD’27 and Kelsey Bogdan MD’27, their interest in pursuing medical studies arose from a love for art.
Wang, a violinist who grew up seeing how deeply music impacted the people around her, said she was stunned to find that “there wasn’t any dedicated curriculum for humanities in medicine” when she arrived at Brown.
Bogdan was also surprised to find, over a conversation with Wang at Seven Stars Bakery in her first year of medical school, the lack of humanity classes at Warren Alpert Medical School. “The arts teach you ways to ask questions,” Bogdan said. “Brown is already such a hub for interdisciplinary thought and scholarship, but we lack any kind of humanities curriculum in the required curricula of the medical school.”
The three believed it was essential to create a common hub for the work “scholars and professors at the medical school have been doing for decades,” Bogdan said From there, the Medical Humanities Initiative was born.
According to Bogdan, The MHI will provide “connection and collaboration,” in the humanities between Brown, Warren Alpert and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Wang identified four key elements within the initiative: a “Lunch and Be” series showcasing local artists in Rhode Island, a Medical Humanities pre-clinical elective at the medical school, formal changes introducing humanities to Warren Alpert’s Doctoring curriculum — during which all students are expected to learn clinical skills — and the formation of a student committee to explore and expand the MHI. The student committee has already attracted more than 70 interested members, according to Wang.
The MHI is currently in consultation with Warren Alpert’s Medical Curriculum Committee to formalize these initiatives in perpetuity so all medical students explore the intersection of medicine and the humanities while at Brown.
Knebel emphasized the tremendous value of the arts in communication. “Even because of our little circle,” she said, referring to her collaboration with Wang and Bogdan, “I’ve found that I respond to things very differently. Because of Diana, I now associate certain songs with feelings that I might struggle to communicate otherwise. Because of Kelsey, I pay closer attention to the strong reactions I have to certain pieces of art.”
To explain the relationship between art and medicine, Wang drawed a connection between the series of cardiology classes second-year medical students take and the musicality of heart murmurs.
Heart murmurs are taught with very musical terms, she said, as the students describe “rhythm” and “crescendo” during their assessments of heartbeats. “There are direct translational skills to be found in the arts,” she said. “Musicians can pick up heart murmurs faster.”
Mariah Stump, an MHI faculty advisor and assistant professor in the department of medicine, also described the value of the students’ work and the importance of the arts in her own practice as a physician.
“The arts inform our clinical decision-making and our ability to sit with concepts like uncertainty,” she said. As a physician and dancer who studied biology, philosophy and English concurrently as an undergraduate, Stump found that “what makes you a skilled clinician is your ability to sit with concepts like grief and loss and uncertainty that inform the human condition.”
In collaborating with Wang, Knebel and Bogdan, Stump’s vision for the MHI is for it become something that sets Brown’s medical school apart.
“For people in the arts, penetrating scientific institutions” can be tremendously difficult, Bogdan said. “I think the MHI is about using our positionality to break down walls between the arts and sciences.”
Ranjana “Jaanu” Ramesh is a Bruno Brief-er, photographer and Senior Staff Writer covering science & research. She loves service, empathetic medicine and working with kids. When not writing or studying comp neuro, Jaanu is outside, reading, skiing, or observing Providence wildlife (ie: squirrels).
