Defining the field of “health humanities” requires careful attention to the fraught concept of humanity itself. As Raymond Williams (1976) points out, the use of “the humanities” to define an academic field inclusive of classics, philosophy, and modern literature arose in the eighteenth century. In this sense, the field of health humanities strives for an inter- or multidisciplinary approach to health inclusive of history, the arts, bioethics, and the social sciences, among countless other forms of thought. Elsewhere in this volume, Sari Altschuler delves into the complexities of this contested discipline and its history in detail (see “Humanities”). Among the genealogical threads she identifies is how the humanities and modern medicine diverged and came to be seen as antithetical. One narrative in this story is that the health humanities (originally “medical humanities” but rightfully expanded to a broader and less elitist scope) historically arose and grew in medical education as a counterbalance to what was seen as corrosive effects of biological sciences—the decline in empathy of clinicians and the loss of a “human” touch (Bleakley 2014). Put bluntly, the soft arts were to restore sensitivity and humanity to the hard sciences that, under the influences of rationality and capitalism, tended...