The relationship between art, science and medicine is ancient. A drawing, sketch or painting can illustrate and communicate ideas much more than words, hence we find many old medical texts that are illuminated or illustrated. In the beginning, the relationship was mutual and it was most intense during the Renaissance. Anatomy taught artists how to construct the human figure, but it was artists who showed anatomists how to draw and thus communicate their discoveries. Leonardo da Vinci joined the two sciences of perspective and anatomy in his anatomical drawings. When Vesalius carried out his systematic studies of the body in the sixteenth century, the illustrations for De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) were executed in the studio of Titian, one of the great Renaissance painters.
But the purpose of high art is not to describe the external world or the body but to tell important stories about human life. To the artist, harmony of mind and body is nature’s purpose. Such view of course is derived from ancient civilizations, including Classical Greece. A growing body of literature now suggests that indeed, the old and discarded concept of the powerful relationship between mind and body does have some basis. Treating the “whole person”, i.e., addressing patients’ psychological needs does have beneficial physical effects. Activities that induce relaxation such as art and music are now being incorporated as adjunctive therapy (see p. 136).
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CARDIOVASCULAR
