Telling Cases: Writing against Genre in Medicine and Literature

Abstract

Building on Gianna Pomata’s concept of “epistemic genre,” the article argues that case histories are a specific textform suited for medical as well as literary communication. But as an inherently cross-disciplinary mode of presenting individual biographies, case histories also work against the idea of “genre” as generalizing typologies both in medicine and aesthetics. Focusing on German literature between 1750 and 1850, the article highlights four aspects of medical case histories that account for the success of this “writing against genre” in literature: discovering reality, avoiding the general, narrating pathology, and calculating normality. As the concluding example of Adalbert Stifter’s novella My Great-Grandfather’s Notebook demonstrates, literary case histories thus challenge established views regarding the relationship between case narratives and the semantics of individuality by incorporating the serial structure of clinical practice.

Roles of Case Studies and Case Reports in US East Asian Medicine: A Narrative-Medicine Perspective

“…These texts bridge the gap between science and literature. 4 They are part of a rich literary tradition undergirding the practice of medicine, which the famous 20th-century practitioner-scholar Qin Bowei (秦伯未) described as the “intimate integration between theory and practice.” 5 In case writing, the “primary goal is not the production of meaning, but the production of knowledge.” 2 Since ancient times physicians have sought ways to pass along what they have learned through years of practice; the case is the ideal vehicle for this transmission. 6…”

“…Scholars both of Chinese and Western medicine use the phrase "thinking with cases," to convey the idea that the case history "is a style of thinking as well as a mode of writing" (Note 5). 4,15 Case histories help order a clinician's thinking around diagnosis, allowing them to create a hierarchy of symptoms and make sense out of a series of events in the course of the patient's illness. 16 The process of putting the story of a patient's illness into a coherent narrative not only clarifies the clinician's thinking but provides an opportunity for reflection.…”

The case as a travelling genre

“…By criss-crossing scientific discourses, case narratives thus helped authors to contribute to knowledge-in-the-making in various emerging professional fields (Düwell, 2014; Düwell and Pethes, 2012; Pethes, 2005). As a consequence of this emphasis on the interdisciplinary and narrative nature of the case, and considering the great heterogeneity of case narratives that were published in different media in this period, Pethes and others question the idea that the case represents a specific genre with distinct textual features (Hess, 2014; Pethes, 2014). Downplaying presumed boundaries between scientific and literary forms of knowledge and writing, Pethes argues that the case format even reflects a certain ‘writing against genre’ (Pethes, 2014), and that various scientific disciplines and literature rather shared an ‘epistemic mode of writing’ (in German: epistemische Schreibweise ) that built its own ‘poetics’ (Pethes, 2016).…”

Historical perspectives: a snapshot of women admitted to psychiatric facilities with psychosis or mania after childbirth in the late Victorian and inter‐war periods

“…Some records provided details of the social influences that may have contributed to the woman's illness. The purpose of reconstructing these healthcare records was to tell the story of the women as it was seen through the eyes of those documenting their care, highlighting good and bad aspects of care delivery (Epstein , Mead & Bower , Kearney , Pethes ).…”