![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/The-Lumen-MAIN.jpg\")
<\/a>Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, professor emeritus of cardiovascular surgery and humanities, and second-year medical student Harsh Agrawal pose with the first issue of the bi-annual art and literary magazine they helped spearhead, The Lumen.<\/p><\/div>\n
Available online and in a glossy printed edition, the first issue of the nearly 50-page magazine features poems, essays, personal columns, illustrations, paintings and photos by UTMC students, faculty and staff that explore the humanity of medicine on professional and sometimes personal levels.<\/p>\n
The concept of medicine as an art that co-exists with painting, literature and music under the umbrella of humanities is important\u2014 not just for patients but for physicians.<\/p>\n
As such, The Lumen\u2019s purpose is personal for Harsh Agrawal, a second-year medical student who serves as one of the publication\u2019s editors, along with David Chu, a second-year medical student; Kate Girdhar, a third-year medical student; and Hedyeh Elahinia, a third-year medical student.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to do this because I could not escape the irony of our situation: Here we were, hoping to treat\u00a0humans<\/em> but studying like\u00a0robots<\/em>\u00a0in our rooms,\u201d Agrawal said. \u00a0\u201cI wanted to celebrate everything about medicine, not just the science.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, professor emeritus of cardiovascular surgery and humanities, a former member of the UToledo Board of Trustees and a columnist for The Blade, serves as the faculty advisor to the student group behind the magazine.<\/p>\n Hussain said the removal of medicine from humanities is a recent approach.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly 60 or 70 years ago there was no compartmentalization between them,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no intersection between humanities and medical because humanities was<\/em> art, literature and medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not been a collective effort to bring these elements together,\u201d said Hussain, who has spent much of his career advocating for the pairing of medical and the other elements of humanities. \u201cThis is a bridge to bring these things together.\u201d<\/p>\n The genesis of The Lumen was in August, 2020, when Agrawal and other members of the Medical Humanities Club had similar ideas for an online literary exploration of art and medicine.<\/p>\n Given the often intense schedule of a medical student, having the capacity to carve out the time to devote to the project was not easy for the student group.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole process was messy and hairy,\u201d Agrawal said. \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019ve done anything of the sort.\u201d<\/p>\n While the group originally planned to limit The Lumen to digital-only publication, Hussain suggested they expand to include printed copies. Content wasn\u2019t a problem, with plenty of student submissions for the first issue, and a few from faculty and staff.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t hard to get contributions from my peers,\u201d Agrawal said. \u201cI am, to this day, still surprised by the diversity and talent of our class, and I am grateful that they shared what was in their hearts with the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n The goal is to produce a new issue each semester.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are optimistically hoping to publish each semester, but we aren\u2019t sure just yet,\u201d Agrawal said. \u201cBe on the lookout for submissions requests soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Lumen magazine features poems, essays, personal columns, illustrations, paintings and photos by UTMC students, faculty and staff that explore the humanity of medicine on professional and sometimes personal levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":878,"featured_media":69448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,38,1,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69446"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69462,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69446\/revisions\/69462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>