The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice can be considered as a metaphor for human fragility and the transformative power of love and art, connecting it to the principles of narrative medicine. By integrating evidence-based medicine with narrative-based approaches, the medical humanities aim to humanize healthcare, fostering empathy, communication and patient-centred care across medical and pharmaceutical practice. Narrative medicine has emerged as a clinical and care-oriented methodology that seeks to integrate technological and scientific knowledge with the humanization of medical practice. Within this conceptual and methodological landscape, narrative pharmacy can be situated as a specific adaptation of narrative medicine, explicitly oriented towards the professional role of the pharmacist and the practices of pharmaceutical care, and is primarily concerned with listening to and interpreting the stories told by patients, as well as those shared among healthcare professionals. The ethics of care in research emphasizes respectful and empathetic practices centred on participants’ well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed institutional distrust and reinforced the need for autonomous health management and individual narrative inclusion. This shift highlights the necessity of transparent communication and authentic patient-professional relationships. Care ethics must now integrate science, environmental awareness and humanistic approaches. Ultimately, prioritizing active citizen participation and personal stories becomes crucial to reshaping post-pandemic healthcare paradigms. The paradigm of alternative medicine constitutes a fundamental epistemological challenge to biomedicine by positing a holistic, vitalistic model of health. This framework redefines disease not as a localized pathology but as a systemic imbalance in a constitutive life force, conceptualized as dynamis in homeopathy or qi in Oriental medicine, shifting the therapeutic aim from symptom suppression to the stimulation of autoregulatory processes. This philosophy is operationalized through modalities such as homeopathy’s similia similibus curentur (let like be cured by like), phytotherapy’s use of plants as synergistic agents of purification and rebalancing and naturopathy’s foundational support of the vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of nature). Consequently, these disciplines collectively advocate for a therapeutic approach that is educative and participatory, emphasizing the restoration of systemic equilibrium and a reconnection between the individual and the natural world.

Medical Humanities

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发表日期：

2026年

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Sabina Leoncini

摘要

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice can be considered as a metaphor for human fragility and the transformative power of love and art, connecting it to the principles of narrative medicine. By integrating evidence-based medicine with narrative-based approaches, the medical humanities aim to humanize healthcare, fostering empathy, communication and patient-centred care across medical and pharmaceutical practice. Narrative medicine has emerged as a clinical and care-oriented methodology that seeks to integrate technological and scientific knowledge with the humanization of medical practice. Within this conceptual and methodological landscape, narrative pharmacy can be situated as a specific adaptation of narrative medicine, explicitly oriented towards the professional role of the pharmacist and the practices of pharmaceutical care, and is primarily concerned with listening to and interpreting the stories told by patients, as well as those shared among healthcare professionals. The ethics of care in research emphasizes respectful and empathetic practices centred on participants’ well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed institutional distrust and reinforced the need for autonomous health management and individual narrative inclusion. This shift highlights the necessity of transparent communication and authentic patient-professional relationships. Care ethics must now integrate science, environmental awareness and humanistic approaches. Ultimately, prioritizing active citizen participation and personal stories becomes crucial to reshaping post-pandemic healthcare paradigms. The paradigm of alternative medicine constitutes a fundamental epistemological challenge to biomedicine by positing a holistic, vitalistic model of health. This framework redefines disease not as a localized pathology but as a systemic imbalance in a constitutive life force, conceptualized as dynamis in homeopathy or qi in Oriental medicine, shifting the therapeutic aim from symptom suppression to the stimulation of autoregulatory processes. This philosophy is operationalized through modalities such as homeopathy’s similia similibus curentur (let like be cured by like), phytotherapy’s use of plants as synergistic agents of purification and rebalancing and naturopathy’s foundational support of the vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of nature). Consequently, these disciplines collectively advocate for a therapeutic approach that is educative and participatory, emphasizing the restoration of systemic equilibrium and a reconnection between the individual and the natural world.