Medical fiction

BMJ 1999;318:955-956 ( 10 April )

Editorials

Medical fiction

Should be accurate, but need not be didactic

Papers pp 972 , 978

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The best works of fiction operate on several levels at once. They contain simple characters and messages which a child canunderstand, but they also contain deeper meanings, which may onlybecome obvious after frequent retelling. Thus the great talesof antiquity $---$ the Mahabharata, the Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh $---$ canoperate both as soap operas and as profound meditations on thegreat imponderables oflife.

It is no accident that these stories are often obscure or ambiguous; indeed, this feature partly accounts for their success.If things are too obvious there is no drama in them. If there'sno drama, the story doesn't engage us emotionally, and withoutemotional engagement the story is unmemorable. Much health advertisingfails for this reason: its very clarity makes it uninterestingand forgettable. By contrast, tobacco advertising, which is forcedfor legal reasons to be oblique, tends to present us with . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Medical fiction could be misleading: Roberto Manfredini
BMJ 1999 319: 1132. [Extract] [Full Text]

Effects of a drug overdose in a television drama on presentations to hospital for self poisoning: time series and questionnaire study: Keith Hawton, Sue Simkin, Jonathan J Deeks, Susan O'Connor, Allison Keen, Douglas G Altman, Greg Philo, and Christopher Bulstrode
BMJ 1999 318: 972-977. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Effects of a drug overdose in a television drama on knowledge of specific dangers of self poisoning: population based surveys: Susan O'Connor, Jonathan J Deeks, Keith Hawton, Sue Simkin, Allison Keen, Douglas G Altman, Greg Philo, and Christopher Bulstrode
BMJ 1999 318: 978-979. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]