When I was an undergrad at Hiram College, I was in the art department as an art history major. I was always interested in the fact that a majority of the studio art minors were biology majors, and no one could ever really provide a substantive answer when I asked about the link between the fields. Also at that time (circa 1990), my college was in the process of instituting a new center, which is now called The Center for Literature, Medicine, and Biomedical Humanities.
In an era before either arts therapy or biomedical ethics was popular or more widely known as a field, I admit to being unfamiliar and skeptical about the link between literature and medicine (at the oh-so-sage age of 21). Even as a die-hard defender of liberal arts education, it seemed kind of random at the time. But I went to a reading of works by doctors, read by doctors, and was incredibly moved. The act of writing provided these medical practitioners with a tool to further humanize their experiences, as well as an artistic outlet for questions of how to approach loss, grief, fear, and even “miracles” from their perspective.
I read an article today that reminded me of my own pondering of the links between science and the arts, and it really brought some of these issues into focus. Titled “Art classes improve diagnostic skills of medical students,” it cites a study that showed that the medical students who studied art could diagnose their patients with greater facility than those who had not studied art. The key difference is that those with art training, even just a little bit, had a more developed skill of observation.
It suddenly made sense to me why all those biology majors were art minors: they, too, were trained as observers of the natural world, and the study of art is just observation from another perspective (more focused on the emotional and aesthetic, versus methodical). It especially makes sense when considering the interests of people who are drawn to a liberal arts education; they are people who already possess a natural sense of curiosity and a willingness to compare or challenge perspective.
And so, I step onto my soap box. Without the arts as an integral part of education and the resulting skills that such study develops, we have will have far less able doctors, scientists, teachers, lawyers, athletes…….
