This fall, for the first time, medical students at the University of
Washington are learning to “diagnose paintings.” It’s the
subject of a new elective class. The term “diagnose,” though it’s the
one they use, is actually the opposite of what they do. They look, they
report the details they see, they become aware of how much they don’t
see by hearing what others see, and, above all, they try to resist the
impulse to make a diagnosis.
The class alternates: On “art weeks” they stand in museums
exhaustively describing artworks. Who made the artwork, when, and in
what style—the usual art-historical details—don’t
matter; only what’s in front of their faces does.
Last week was a “medical week.” In a small conference room at the
Henry Art Gallery, the lights are turned out and slides are
glowing, just like in any art-history class. But these are medical
slides. Dr. Andrea Kalus (the class is cotaught by Kalus, a
dermatologist, and Tamara Moats, a longtime art-history educator) is
trying to get the 19 students to respond to snapshots of patients with
the same blank receptivity they bring to art. It is not really
working.
“Is that cyanosis?” one student asks, faced with an image of
a silvery-skinned man.
“I think that’s Horner syndrome,” is the response to a picture of a
woman with two different-colored, differently shaped eyes.
For every slide Dr. Kalus shows, the students can manage about three
minutes of observation—”one pupil is bigger than the
other,” etc.—before they succumb to their desire to name a
diagnosis. Dr. Kalus stops them: “Just tell me what you see.”
When they stick with observation for a prolonged period, the results
are almost miraculous. From a single image of a dark-haired girl with a
red, blistery pattern on her skin, they determine—by continuing
to seek details against an onslaught of their mistaken
theories—that the injury was caused by an external source (its
borders are straight lines); not caused by liquid, chemicals, or
radiation (given the patterning); and that it’s a severe sunburn caused
by the patient taking photosensitizing drugs (ibuprofen). They can even
say where the sun hung. (I want to mention to them that the
direction of light is a major preoccupation in art, especially
painting.)
Typically, med students get specific instruction on how to listen to
and how to touch (palpate) their patients—but not on how
to look at them. “Physical diagnostic tools,” as Dr. Kalus calls them,
used to be emphasized before the rise of technology. Today’s gap in
visual training is made worse by the fact that medical students are
extremely goal-oriented, the doc says: They want to get to the answer.
The gift of art, for them, is that it can’t be diagnosed. All they can
learn from it is to keep looking. 
