Introduction

This introductory chapter offers an overview and a reappraisal of the emerging field of the medical humanities from the ars medica in Ancient Greece to the significance of the two cultures debate in the study of literature and medicine, and the recent rise of the genre of the pathography or illness narrative, taking as a point of departure Susan Sontag's seminal treatise Illness as Metaphor (1978). The conception of medicine as an art of healing is inherently embedded in the classical origins of the medical tradition, a medicinal craft that played an important role in the development of holistic practices in ancient Greece. The chapter also considers the various ways in which Iberian and Latin American literature can enrich and offer valuable insights to the medical humanities, showing that critical perspectives outside the mainstream Anglo-American paradigm can provide important case studies for contemporary debates about cultural representations of health and disease.