welcome to volume VIII of ars literarium

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Volume VIII of Ars Literarium. From the perspective of two young medical students, the world has been busy shuffling its cards these last few years. Together, we’ve been dealt a hand that most of us could never have imagined. Between a pandemic that still continues its relentless spread to numerous threats to equitable healthcare access, we have had to collectively reckon with our past and carve out a new understanding of what our present and future may look like. Perhaps more importantly than ever, then, Ars Literarium offers a space for members of the RBHS community to reflect, create, share, and implore. To meditate on issues that impact us on individual, community, and global scales. To try to see things in a new light, or to simply indulge in old, nostalgic memories.

In our eighth issue of Ars Literarium, we are overjoyed to share with you works of art and literature that encompass themes that we all are familiar with, although surely in different ways. They span various emotions and experiences—hope, fatigue, gratitude, and anguish, to name a few—as conveyed through, for example, a personal essay grieving the loss of a family member or a snapshot of the moon during a moment of contemplation.

Indeed, these works of art and writing do the necessary work of reminding us of the different dimensions of humanity that tie us all together. Medicine is inherently a humanistic endeavor, and these pieces emphasize the vulnerability and strength that medical encounters demand from both patients and providers. We hope that you, reader, will take a moment to celebrate with us the small mundanities and grand complexities of our lives, both in health and in illness, which are captured so brilliantly by the artists featured in this edition of Ars Literarium.

As always, we remain incredibly grateful to our contributors, the many physicians, students, residents, instructors, and other health professionals who generously shared their work with us. We are humbled and overjoyed to now share their work with you, and we hope it makes as much of an impression on you as it has on us.

Sincerely,

Editors of Ars Literarium