Abstract

Although more and more people are talking about medical humanities, thanks to a renewed interest in the human component that used to be central to medicine, the discussion on the identification of an unambiguous definition of this «aggregator of disciplines’ is still open. By retracing the dimension of ‘humanism», the origins of evidence-based medicine and the paradigm shift that occurred with the WHO definition of health in 1948, this paper traces a brief history of medical humanities, also through the visual representation given by Sandro Spinsanti, one of the pioneers of medical humanities in Italy.This leads to the presentation of the projects conducted by the Alessandria Hospital, and in particular by the Study Centre for Medical Humanities, in collaboration with a number of leading institutions in the sector such as the Cultural Wellbeing Lab (CWLAB) and Compagnia di San Paolo, the Italian Society of Narrative Medicine (SIMeN), with the ultimate goal of uniting technical-scientific knowledge and humanistic-artistic knowledge in clinical practice and in the doctor-patient relationship.