Prof Fergus Shanahan: 'When words fail, art gives the sufferer a voice'
Professor Fergus Shanahan. Picture: Stephen Bean
A medical practitioner for 40 years, Fergus Shanahan says science can only tell us so much about disease. Professor of Medicine at UCC and scientist at APC Microbiome Ireland, Shanahan relies on the arts to understand what it feels like to be sick.
“Science doesn’t tell you about the lived experience of disease. The only way to understand that – and what it is to heal – is from stories people tell, which aren’t always written but expressed across all forms of art,” says Shanahan.
He defines healing as any experience that reduces suffering and is struck by how difficult it is to find definitions of healing in medical literature. “The word isn’t used much more than in the context of broken bones or cuts,” he observes.
Though “all for escapism”, he emphasises healing isn’t distraction from suffering. “It’s an active repair process. Healing is baked into our DNA. We’re continually being broken in different ways and constantly healing. DNA is constantly repairing.”
At the Tate in London, the painting, The Doctor, speaks to the heart of what Shanahan believes about the limitations of science – and the patience required by healing, a patience also integral to creating and appreciating art. “It shows a child clearly suffering, the parents distraught, the doctor looking on, powerless but with compassion and empathy.”
It was painted in the late 1800s, at a time when doctors didn’t have many effective remedies. “The doctor’s power was largely one of mystique that they created. They cared for the patient while nature healed the disease.”
Medicine has changed remarkably since, even in Shanahan’s own lifetime. “We’ve very powerful drugs, rapid diagnostics. We’re healthier than ever but we’re more anxious about our health than ever, more distrustful of the medical system despite advances.”
Modern medicine has speeded up, while illness invariably slows us down. “In today’s fast-paced world, doctors’ time with patients is limited. Yet, during illness, the patient’s sense of time slows down.”
In such a world of distraction, the voice of the ill may be obscured – but art may be in sync with the patient. “You have to slow down when you look at a piece of art. It demands you slow down, focus,” says Shanahan.
And art might provide a beneficial slowing for the doctor too. He cites the work of German artist Thomas Struth, who has produced photographs for hospitals – with different photos at the head of the bed for carers/medics to see, and others at the foot of the bed for the patient.
Shanahan became “utterly convinced” that healing and artistic expression are interwoven when collaborating with Fiona Kearney of the Glucksman Gallery to stage an art exhibition on the experience of illness a decade ago. It featured works of “remarkable artists” – many affected Shanahan deeply, and still do. Pieces such as Cecily Brennan’s sculpture, The Bandaged Heart – a stainless steel heart with a bandage around it.
“There’s the metaphor of a cold stainless steel heart that can bleed and suffer. I noticed visitors wanting to touch it – which the artist wanted, had intended.”
Now in CUH and dedicated to the bereaved, as well as the ill, the piece “can offer comfort to someone with a broken heart”, says Shanahan.
Launching his book, The Language of Illness, in 2020, Shanahan spoke of “bad language” in medicine, saying words used can sometimes be counterproductive, can fail. “When words fail, art gives the sufferer a voice, a means of defiant expression, a means to uphold dignity.” He mentions a woman who photographed herself through her illness.
By presenting some aspect of an illness story, he says art improves understanding, helping integrate the illness experience. He admires Tamsin van Essen’s ceramics, “which show beauty and illness can co-exist” – in particular her vase with scaling on its surface, representing skin disease eczema. “The overall effect is one of beauty.”
Describing himself as “a clinician-scientist interested in words, microbes and people”, he says his mother, Rosaleen, loved art. “She was a nurse. Anytime she had extra money, she bought each of us a small piece of art. She had a good eye,” he says, recalling her gifting him a Henry Healy painting of the Grand Canal, close to where Shanahan was born in Percy Place.
More recently, lockdown isolation reminded him of the isolation of illness. “I found solace looking out the window at nature. One day a buzzard flew into the garden. I spent 18 months immersing myself in trying to capture a photo. I eventually got a beautiful photo – that got me through,” says Shanahan, currently developing a graphic story about the microbiome with artist Laura Gowers.
- Fergus Shanahan will speak about how healing and artistic expression are interwoven at MAKE annual textile conference, online on March 5 – register at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/make-2022-tickets-254564197367
