“A spark of being”: Frankenstein and anesthesiology

Excerpt

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus when she was 20 years old, writing the tale in response to a challenge by Lord Byron two years earlier during a stormy summer stay in a Swiss mansion. The barebones of the plot is part of the public imagination—a student, Victor Frankenstein, becomes obsessed with creating life and succeeds in doing so. Nevertheless, Frankenstein immediately rejects his creature, which has devastating consequences. Shelley’s novel, the first to feature science as the construct to create a “human,” has a wealth of themes, layers, characters, and sensibilities that make it a worthwhile and surprising read. Although I read it when I was young, I had forgotten it, and only stumbled upon it again as the book is a staple in the canon of medical/health humanities, an academic discipline that seeks to deepen understanding of the contexts of medicine, health, illness, and mortality through the tools and lens of the humanities, arts, and qualitative social sciences. …