Modern Language Review

Recent decades have seen the emergence of the medical humanities as an important scholarly field in the Anglo-American world, one which seeks to bridge the gap between the ‘two cultures’ of science and the arts by applying humanities methodologies to the study of medicine. The editors of this thought-provoking volume, Konstantin Starikov and Melissa Miller, seek to bring Russia into this picture, bringing together chapters by nine scholars from across multiple disciplines and professions in the USA and Russia. They argue that engagement between medicine and the arts in Russia has a long history (not least in the work of famed doctor-writers such as Anton Chekhov, whose name recurs throughout the volume), and that attention to that history can open up new perspectives for both medical students and Slavic scholars.

The book is divided into two parts. The first considers past and present examples of Russian medical humanities practice, including a detailed reflection on the history of Russian medicine in Evgeniya L. Panova and Maria S. Tutorskaya’s chapter on the growth of the Russian medical community as a social force in the nineteenth century. The next three chapters consider some of the current challenges and opportunities facing the Russian medical humanities, such as the difficulty of preserving historical collections of medical artefacts, the establishment of a new course for medical students, ‘The Doctor as Humanist’, at Sechenov University in Moscow, and reflections on the participation of Slavic Studies scholars in the teaching of trainee doctors in North America. The second part explores the engagement of Russian cultural figures with medical science in literary works by Chekhov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Julia Voznesenskaia, Vikentii Veresaev, and Liudmila Ulitskaia. This section also includes a fascinating chapter by Frederick H. White analysing the career of Praskovʹia Tarnovskaia (1852–1935), a Russian anthropologist whose research on the physiognomy of ‘criminal women’ pre-dated and influenced that of Cesare Lombroso.

As the editors acknowledge in their preface, this is a rather eclectic collection of chapters, ranging ‘in tone and style between academic research and personal observation, close readings of literary texts, and surveys of professional activities, fact, and opinion’ (p. xvi). Yet their volume’s central contention—that Russia provides [End Page 428] a unique example of the relationship between medicine and the arts, and that engagement with this ‘other’ can be instructive—is persuasive and consistent across all contributions. Many of the chapters consider how new techniques of teaching in North American medical education, such as the focus on ‘narrative medicine’, reflect long-standing trends in Russian art and medical care. A standout chapter in this regard is Jehanne Gheith’s study of how literature about dementia, such as Liudmila Ulitskaia’s 2001 novel The Kukotskii Case, can help us to challenge the cultural script that traditionally frames this disease as a ‘horror story’. Drawing on her twin roles as a social worker and a professor of Russian literature, Gheith shows powerfully how art can lay bare problems inherent in medicine, and how encounters with the Russian ‘other’ can open up new ways of treating those with dementia and supporting their carers.

Published in 2021, this volume idealistically aims to promote further conversation and collaboration between scholars, doctors, and students in Russia and the wider world, and to consider the ‘contribution of Russian medical humanities to the past and present aspirations of humanity as a whole: the betterment of human society beyond borders’ (p. xv). One cannot read the book now without being aware that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has challenged this aspiration and made the kind of collaboration showcased here infinitely more difficult. Yet the contributors also make a powerful case for the value of medical humanities in responding to the current moment, through their discussion of how doctors and humanists together can reflect the impact of war on the human body and...