Beyond the Scalpel, Learning About Humanities in Medicine

Updated on Oct 9, 2025 | Featured, School

From left to right: Alexis Hatch, MD student and organizer of the Two-Minute Talks in the Medical Humanities; Suzanne Garfinkle, MD, Director, Academy for Medicine and the Humanities; and Jacob Appel, MD, JD, MPH, Assistant Director, Academy for Medicine and the Humanities.

Training to be a researcher or physician at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai isn’t just about excellence at the bench and bedside but also understanding the humanity that underpins these callings.

Thus exists the field of “medical humanities,” an area of study that draws upon the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance medical practice. On Thursday, September 18, members from the Mount Sinai Health System were invited to share and learn about topics where humanities and medicine intersect at the inaugural Two-Minute Talks in Medical Humanities.

With just 120 seconds each, 18 presenters—spanning faculty members, medical students, master’s students, and PhD students—covered topics they were passionate about: Where did Leonardo da Vinci think the soul was located in the body? How has the medical stretcher evolved through time? Can listening to Indian classical music have therapeutic effects?

“As a student admitted through Flex Med, a program designed to bring students in the humanities into medicine, I know firsthand how valuable a humanities background is when learning how to be a compassionate physician,” said Alexis Hatch, a second-year MD student, who came up with the idea for the event.

The inspiration for Two-Minute Talks came from Ms. Hatch’s time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, where she participated in a similar event. “When I started as a student ambassador for the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities at the Icahn School of Medicine, I immediately thought a similar event would draw students and faculty to share their interests outside of clinical medicine or research,” she said. “I knew the interest was there—every time I shadowed a physician, they seemed much more interested in discussing my history degree than any scientific research I did!”

“We loved the idea because you can teach an audience a great deal in two minutes, and the time limit made each talk extra dynamic,” said Suzanne Garfinkle, MD, Founding Director of the Academy, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Medical Education. “The event offered a very special window into participants’ creative and scholarly passions. I could see these two-minute lectures developing into a real Mount Sinai tradition.”

Take a look at what some of the presenters talked about during the event in the slideshow below.

Alexis Hatch, medical student and organizer of the Two-Minute Talks in Medical Humanities, gave a presentation on things that exist today thanks to the existence of tuberculosis.
In addition to tuberculosis camp towns—the roots of places like Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Pasadena, California—Stetson hats and the fictional character Sherlock Holmes had origins relating to the disease. For the latter, author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes’ deductive reasoning traits on the methods he used to debunk a failed tuberculosis remedy at the time.
Jeffrey Laitman, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Medical Education, talked about Leonardo da Vinci’s search for where the soul is located in the body anatomically.
Leonardo da Vinci, said Dr. Laitman, was obsessed with the human skull, and searched for the “senso commune,” which he thought was where the soul was located. The polymath thought he had found its location: at the floor of the third ventricle, just superior to the pituitary fossa.
Vasundhara Singh, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Hospital Medicine), and Medical Education, elaborated on the history of the medical stretcher. “Why do I care about stretchers? Because I spend half my time bent over them,” she said.
The earliest stretchers date back more than 150 years, and were also called “ambulances.” Over the decades, stretcher designs were informed by wartime constraints for space, and eventually paid more attention to comfort and materials, said Dr. Singh.
Some spiritual healing retreats in “hot igloos” in Mexico promoted on social media are simply co-opted traditional birthing huts, said Jaime Gonzalez, medical student, who talked about indigenous Mexican birthing practices.
Giving birth in hot houses is still practiced in parts of Mexico. Culture and tourism might have been intertwined, but it important for tourists to be mindful of the origins of some of these practices, said Mr. Gonzalez.
Enna Selmanovic, PhD candidate, spoke about brain donation law and representation in the United States.
Brain donation has the potential to greatly advance understanding of human disease but is complicated by law, culture, family dynamics, and ethics. “These choices shape the stories that medicine tells us about disease, and whose medical history is left out,” said Ms. Selmanovic.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This

Share this post with your friends!

Share This

Share this post with your friends!