Week 4 - MedTech and Art

This week we learned about the relationship between Medical Technology through the years and it's meaning with art. Back in the time of the Hippocratic Oath, doctors viewed science and art as the same exact practice. They thought that a doctor working on a patient and doing their work on the patient was the same thing as an artist working on a piece of paper and doing their work on the paper.

Many people of that time had the belief that working with the human body in a medical field was a form of art. I can see why this is plausible because myself, I personally agree with this belief, because in a way they are either fixing, or adding to the human body. For doctors, the human body was their canvas, just as artists have paper as their canvas, both require a canvas to complete their work. Therefore, both artists and doctors while the work they complete is far from similar, they are both using their forms of work, and in their own way, making artwork.

https://www.ancientpages.com/2015/10/07/hippocrates-didnt-write-oath-father-medicine/

The unfortunate issue however, is that doctors today no longer believe in the Hippocratic Oath, and now see their field of work less artistic and more of a science. I think that their old belief was more accurate due to the doctors having their canvas being a human body. When a doctor operates on a human body, the body becomes the object that the doctor is working on. Whether the doctor is performing surgery, cutting off a limb or simply prescribing medical drugs to help the person, the doctors work is the human body that's being worked on. Therefore, In my eyes, any profession completing their work, is their form of art.

http://health.sunnybrook.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/yhm-cancer-nutrition-1-425x282.jpg

Another way that Art Medical Technology are related is by the Medical Technology itself producing forms of artwork like a painting does. As argued by Silvia Casini, "the MRI has a 'look' in the same way that the portrait has". I found her argument quite intriguing because after thinking about it, I completely agreed with her. An MRI scan allows a person to see the muscular structure of a person's body. The MRI scanner produces an image of the person's body and it appears quite artistic. Many artists produced paintings of human muscular structures from the motivation from the Medical Technology scanners used by doctors.

https://humananatomyandstructureoflivingthings.wordpress.com/desktop-wallpapers/

“CTheory.net.” CTheory.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=71>.

ELITEIMAGING. “Understanding MRIs.” YouTube. YouTube, 15 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5q79R9C-mk>.

Tyson, Peter. “The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS. PBS, 27 Mar. 2001. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html>.

“Usability of Electronic Medical Records.” - International Journal of Usability Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2009february/smelcer5.html>.

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine and Art: Part 2.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded>.