Alexandre Charles Wenger

How to make the most of history and literature in the teaching of medical humanities: the experience of the University of Geneva

In this paper the authors discuss the benefits of history and literature in the teaching of medical humanities. They suggest that human sciences produce a common effect, which they call distancing. Distancing is the awareness that one natural way to describe a given situation does not exist and that any point of view—scientific or not—is context dependant and culturally shaped. Distancing is important to medical students, by allowing them to become aware of the specificity of their own professional point of view. The authors offer a reflection on the specificities of both historical and literary approaches and on the tools they provide for medical students. This paper assumes there is a close link between the theoretical debate on the benefits provided by human sciences and the concrete framework of a given programme. The authors describe team teaching, which has been the solution adopted in the School of Medicine at the University of Geneva to obtain the most from history and literature.

Informed Consent Forms in Oncology Research: Linguistic Tools Identify Recurrent Pitfalls

Background: Understanding of informed consent forms (ICFs) for clinical research remains insufficient despite attempts to simplify them. Through linguistic discourse analysis, we sought to identify pitfalls within the text of ICFs that could hinder readers’ understanding of participation in research. Methods: We conducted a linguistic discourse analysis on a qualitative sample of 19 ICFs approved by research ethics committees (RECs) for oncology protocols and explored whether our findings also applied to standard U.S. documents available online. Results: We identified five major categories of language patterns that were problematic with respect to ensuring informed consent. We categorized them as follows: “bypassing consent,” “seeker–supplier inversion,” “interlocking Russian dolls,” “vanishing author,” and “one size fits all.” At least one instance of these findings existed in all analyzed forms (median 10 per ICF, range 1–18) and in national templates and U.S. documents. Conclusions: Linguistic discourse analysis identified recurrent pitfalls in the language of REC-approved ICFs and templates. This approach may provide new tools to improve ICFs.

La place de l’histoire naturelle dans La Nouvelle Justine, ou Sade lecteur de J.-B. Robinet

Abstract Violence in Sade’s published works exercises a powerful fascination on his readers and encourages them to believe that the characters in his novels voice the author’s personal opinions. We can easily overlook the fact that Sade was not an ideologue, but a writer of fiction. Analysing the ways in which Sade develops his characters, this article argues that Sade employed theories taken from the field of natural history in order to construct the speech and the actions of his characters. This article is a case study which examines Sade’s literary exploitation in La Nouvelle Justine (1797) of certain theoretical positions deriving from J.-B. Robinet’s treatise De la Nature (1761).

Déplacer les savoirs. Discours savant et fiction romanesque chez Sade et Diderot

Une theorie savante ne produit pas les memes effets de lecture selon qu’elle est exposee sous la forme dogmatique du traite, ou qu’elle est presentee dans une fiction, exprimee par des personnages singuliers. Dans cet article, nous nous interessons au deplacement d’une theorie savante vers le roman : a quel type de travail litteraire ce phenomene de transposition correspond-il ? De quelle valeur esthetique l’importation d’une idee savante dans l’espace de la fiction est-elle porteuse ? Enfin, un tel deplacement s’accompagne-t-il d’outils conceptuels specifiques pour penser les relations entre science et litterature ? Notre reflexion se fonde sur deux exemples : le premier porte sur la maniere dont Sade utilise la theorie naturaliste de Jean-Baptiste Robinet (1735-1820) lorsqu’il compose La Nouvelle Justine. Le second concerne la maniere dont Diderot s’est reapproprie la theorie organiciste de Theophile de Bordeu (1722-1776) dans Le Reve de d’Alembert.