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Aaron Greenberg
Doctoral Student, English Department
Graduate Affiliate, MH&B Program
Northwestern University

The Methuselah Complex: Longevity’s Past and Future

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates begins his first aphorism with a simple but resounding declaration: vita brevis, or life is short. In the centuries following, ethicists, theologians, and poets consistently praised the virtues of short life while critiquing the pursuit of longevity. That Francis Bacon needs to preface his treatise on life-prolongation, The historie of life and death (1638), with a host of apologies and caveats, suggests that the desire to live longer was neither as widespread nor as self-evident as it appears in the West today. In this talk, I read Bacon’s treatise as a central node linking premodern longevity discourse to ongoing conversations in medicine, biotechnology, and culture. I argue that historicizing current longevity initiatives—for example, at major universities, Mayo Clinic, the Buck Institute, and Google’s California Life Company—makes us better informed as to how, and whether, we should contribute to the millennia-spanning project of life-extension.

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Carli Leone
Doctoral Student, English Department
Graduate Affiliate, MH&B Program
Northwestern University

Benjamin Rush: Founding Father of the Medical Humanities

Benjamin Rush was the most well known physician in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a reformer who supported female education, a revision of the penal laws, and improvement in city sanitation. Throughout the centuries, however, his legacy has been haunted by his excessive use of bloodletting to cure fevers. In this talk I will resuscitate his reputation by positioning him as the founding father of the Medical Humanities in the United States. This talk will focus on how and why he incorporated literature into his medical texts and, in turn, how and why we should read his medical texts as literature. I will conclude by suggesting the ways we can connect Rush’s work and vision to the Medical Humanities today.

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Annalese Duprey-Henry
Doctoral Student, English Department
Graduate Affiliate, MH&B Program
Northwestern University

A Disease Touching the Brain: Lovesickness in Western History and Literature

In the second century CE, lovesickness entered into the realm of medicine in the writings of Galen. Western medicine considered disordered love a mental illness from antiquity through to the Renaissance, although the malady has since fallen from favor. This talk will introduce the disease, especially in its medieval iteration, and consider the ways in which medicine and literature can be mutually dependent and informative. Lovesickness’s rise and fall asks us to consider diseases not as independent facts but as culturally contingent experiences with societal and diagnostic ramifications.

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* Cosponsored by Feinberg's Queers & Allies student group *

Scott Leibowitz, MD
Attending Psychiatrist, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
Head Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Gender and Sex Development Program
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Sexual Orientation Conversion "Therapy:" Ethical Considerations of Applying A Fixed Outcome Behavioral Health Approach to Minors

Efforts to change or alter the sexual orientation of a child or adolescent are also more commonly known as conversion therapy. Legislative efforts to ban such interventions have recently picked up steam, including here in Illinois, and such a bill is currently sitting on Governor Rauner's desk awaiting his decision to sign it into law. An American Psychological Association 2009 Taskforce reviewed the existing literature and concluded that such efforts- regardless of how subtle the modality- are harmful to individuals, as they work off the false premise that homosexuality is pathological (removed from the DSM in 1973) and promote further shame and isolation for individuals with same-gender attractions, particularly when the efforts do not work as they purport to. The concept of a fixed-outcome behavioral health intervention (defining an achievable specific endpoint) is incongruent in psychiatric practice as clinicians typically need to address the multiple aspects of identity and behavioral health factors that might be contributing to psychopathology and cannot make definitive promises that treatment would lead to an elimination of a certain illness. To apply such an intervention towards an aspect of identity that is a normal variant of the human experience, such as sexual orientation, is even further unethical. Many even argue that referring to these efforts as a "therapy" risks legitimizing the interventions, when they are not rooted in science, do not withstand the ethical principle of "do no harm" as dictated by the modern medical community, and have zero backing by any major professional medical organization. For minors- who lack the autonomy to choose a behavioral health provider- these types of interventions prey on the fears of families seeking to fix something that is not inherently psychopathological in their child or adolescent. This presentation will review these concepts, explore how they extend to gender identity and expression, and raise awareness to the complex issues.