On metaphorical concentration: language and meaning in patient-physician relations.

Charles Taylor's retrieval of an expressivist understanding of persons, and of language as constitutive of meaning, contains promising insights for restoring moral connectedness between patients and physicians.

Premature luteinization and in vitro fertilization outcome in gonadotropin/gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist cycles in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Objective: To determine the incidence of premature luteinization in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) undergoing controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) with exogenous gonadotropin/GnRH antagonist (GnRH-a); to compare clinical outcomes in patients with and without premature luteinization.

Design: Retrospective case series.

Setting: IVF clinic.

Engaged humanities: moral work in the precincts of medicine.

The medical humanities emerged in the late 1960s in response to shared concerns among a group of hospital chaplains, academic clinicians, and moral theologians and philosophers about the growing power of a technological imperative and a perceived trend toward depersonalization in medicine. Gathering themselves originally under the rubric of "health and human values," these reformers launched a new field of intellectual work and practice reminiscent of the revival of liberal learning spawned by the Renaissance humanists, who endeavored to link humanistic ideals to professional practice in the workaday world of their time. The task of appropriating and adapting the studia humanitatis to our time and circumstances is crucial to defining the evolving identity of the medical humanities field.

Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The Institute for the Medical Humanities of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) was established in June 1973 to ensure that humanities teaching and research became an integral part of the education of future scientists and health-care professionals at UTMB. The multidisciplinary faculty of the Institute-who currently represent the disciplines of art, drama, history, law, literature, philosophy, and religious studies-teach in all four years of the undergraduate medical curriculum as well as in various residency programs. In addition to its focus on students and residents in the School of Medicine, the Institute has a vibrant graduate program in medical humanities with several joint degree options, including an MD/MA and an MD/PhD program, and the Institute has always included the School of Nursing, the School of Allied Health Sciences, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in its activities.