Allen Memorial Medical Library
11000 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44106
(In-person Only for the moment. We may offer this hybrid, but are not yet certain.)
The 100-year-old satire Knock: Or the Triumph of Medicine, the greatest commercial success of French writer and philosopher Jules Romains (1885-1972), was written at a time of rapid epistemological, scientific, and technological changes in French medicine. Since its debut it has been staged around the world, and has had multiple film renditions. The plot centers on the title character of Knock, an autodidact doctor who comes to a rural French town to buy the medical practice of the retiring Doctor Parpalaid. Knock had expected that the practice would be financially lucrative, but quickly comes to understand that Parpalaid had not run the business well. Knock senses an opportunity and concocts a plan, using modern technology, jargon, and the medical gaze, to bring the town into “the Age of Medicine,” and enrich himself.
This staged reading will be followed by a brief discussion of the Health Humanities Consortium Conference theme, “Mobilizing Selves, Transforming Structures.” How do the themes in the play reflect on the individual actions and structural inequities of today’s health care system? How can we use this conference as an opportunity to envision more just, equitable, and inclusive health and health care?
This event is sponsored by the John P. Murphy Foundation. It is part of the Health Humanities Consortium Conference, co-sponsored by the Department of Bioethics, Ǹ School of Medicine and the Program in Medical Humanities, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.