Swansea, United Kingdom

Health Humanities

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: medicine, health care
University website: www.swan.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Health
Health is the ability of a biological system to acquire, convert, allocate, distribute, and utilize energy with maximum efficiency. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined human health in a broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This definition has been subject to controversy, in particular as lacking operational value, the ambiguity in developing cohesive health strategies and because of the problem created by use of the word "complete", which makes it practically impossible to achieve. Other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction.
Health Humanities
Health humanities refers to the application of the creative or fine arts (including visual arts, music, performing arts) and humanities disciplines (including literary studies, languages, law, history, philosophy, religion, etc.) to discourse about, express, and/or promote dimensions of human health and well being. This applied capacity of the humanities is not itself a novel idea; however, the construct of the health humanities has only recently begun to emerge over the first decade of the 21st Century. Historically, the roots informing the health humanities can be traced back to, and can now be considered to include, such multidisciplinary areas as the medical humanities and the expressive therapies/creative arts therapies.
Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training.
Health
In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
Alison Rose Levy, in "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life" in Yoga Journal (January - February 2002).
Health
There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), XI.
Health
Of all the garden herbes none is of greater vertue than sage.
Thomas Cogan, Heaven of Health (1596). Quoting from Schola Salerni, p. 32.
We have reached planetary boundaries - human pressures on finite, earth systems are at a tipping point. However, the technology to address this near catastrophe is now within our reach, according to expert in sustainable development, Jeffrey Sachs.
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