Cecil G. Helman

Cecil Helman (4 January 1944 – 15 June 2009) was a South African doctor, author, and medical anthropologist.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} He published poetry, essays, and short stories, as well as academic books and papers.

Adam Kuper, a sometime professor of anthropology at Brunel University, was lecturing on the topic at UCL when he first got to know Helman. “It was very unusual then for a medical person to do a social science course”, he recalls. “But Cecil was always more than doctor. He wanted to develop a number of strands to his life.” These included painting and writing poetry and prose. It was Kuper who, in the late 1980s, hired Helman to work at Brunel on what was the first medical anthropology course in England. “As a teacher at Brunel he was very good. The course originally attracted mainly people with health backgrounds because health authorities had begun to struggle with the problems and ideas of immigrant groups with which they weren’t well equipped to deal. Cecil was particularly successful at Socratic teaching in small groups. He would get students to read things, talk about them, and then shape the discussion.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Helman

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673609614033/fulltext

Dear Dr Ellenberger,
I am a doctor as well as a writer. You might be interested in my recent memoir: Suburban Shaman: Tales freom Medicine’s Frontline (see: www.hammersmithpress.co.uk/suburbanshaman ), which in March was selected for broadcast by the BBC as a ‘Book of the Week’.
Best wishes,
Cecil Helman