Diana Rodríguez Vértiz

Luis Hernández Camarero: A Poetic Reminder about the Mission of Medicine

Diana Rodríguez Vértiz

Käte Hamburger Kolleg für Kulturelle Praktiken der Reparation

diana.rodriguez-vertiz@khk.uni-saarland.de

More than fifty years after the birth of medical humanities–and despite theoretical discussions, interdisciplinary syllabi, the study of codes of ethics, and training in the prevention of discrimination and maltreatment–many kinds of violence still exist in the medical space around the world, as discussed in the World Health Organization’s Statement on Ending Discrimination in Health Care Settings. How can we think of effective ways to sensitize doctors and prevent the recurrence of maltreatment in their practice, in their daily relationships with patients? A Peruvian doctor by the name of Luis Hernández Camarero (Lima, Peru 1941-Santos Lugares, Argentina 1977), who happened to also be a poet, recognized and experienced maltreatment in hospitals and clinics. As a response to that, he created an aesthetic project around the main aim to cure any kind of pain, a project that constantly reflects on the dignity of patients. To do that, the Peruvian poet steadily quotes and shows the pertinent ethical codes that guide medicine in Latin America, from the Hippocratic Oath to the Moral for Doctors (Moral para médicos) written by the Argentinian Florencio Escardó. In this presentation, I would like to share how the work of Luis Hernández can provide us with some ideas to revitalize medical ethical codes and give us an alternative that fosters a humanized treatment of patients and their families in medical institutions. Firstly, I will present ethics as a central aspect of medicine and how poetry can expand the small space given to ethics during medical training and practices. The second idea tries to respond to the way ethics is taught and how to avoid ethical codes falling to the wayside in daily practice. Unlike reading and memorizing axioms and rules, literature helps us reflect on meaning. Hernández’s verses foster a reexamination of the words and their significance in the lives of both patients and doctors. In the middle of the rush in medical spaces, a few words can be a powerful reminder of the importance of curing, and that curing is impossible without dignity.

BIOGRAPHY

Diana Rodríguez Vértiz studied a PhD in Latin American Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a master’s degree in Hispanic studies at the University of Washington. From 2012 to 2021, she worked as a research assistant with Dr. Margarita León Vega at the Philology Institute at UNAM, where she collaborated on two projects about mystical experiences in Mexican poetry. In the same years, Dr. Rodríguez Vértiz taught the course “Literature and Criticism of Literary Production in Latin America” under the direction of Dr. León Vega in the Latin American Studies Graduate Program at UNAM. Dr. Rodríguez Vértiz’s research is focused on Latin American Poetry of the 20th century. For more than a decade she has studied the work of the Peruvian doctor and writer Luis Hernández Camarero. Her most recent piece of scholarship explores the relationship between poetry, science, and ethics in Hernández Camarero’s artistic project. Currently she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation, CURE, at the University of Saarland, where she develops a project about healing, medicine, and reparation in the work of Luis Hernández Camarero.