Introduction

This book proposes an integrated and interdisciplinary approach recording and interpreting the human experience of illness, disability, care, and medical intervention. In our age of deeply technologically-driven medicine, it is crucial to re-establish and promote the neglected relationship between medicine and the arts. This textbook contains contributions by scholars in various fields, who offer their qualified insights in order to reflect on illness, medicine, and the role of physicians and nurses. All chapters overcome a reductive conception of a medicine that is only able to biologically explain illness.

About the Editors and the City of Padua

All three editors of this book are researchers in Padua, a city that has been described as the cradle of modern medicine. Galileo Galilei taught for eighteen years at the University of Padua  and developed the scientific method there. During the same period, Padua was also the “nursery of arts”, as Shakespeare wrote. In fact, Padua developed, especially in the XIV, XV, and XVI centuries, an impressive and unique artistic culture thanks to artists such as Giotto, Donatello and Titian. Finally, the city of Saint Anthony is a place where a religious feeling strongly oriented towards charity is deeply rooted and strictly linking its history to that of its hospital. This textbook is a unique resource for students of medicine, nursing, bioethics, psychology, theology, and history of art.