**2. Art and medicine**

As a result of reading history, we can be aware of how much art and medicine have remained integrated for centuries. It is enough to go far back in time to find examples transmitted by artistic objects to understand, as a whole, the importance of the solid relationship between medicine and visual arts starting from when in ancient Greece, which can be considered the cradle of our modern culture, the anatomists asked the artists for help to understand the human body. In fact, at that time, dissection was practiced on the bodies of animals, while it was forbidden to explore human anatomy for social and religious reasons.

Respect for the body of the deceased on the one hand and the consideration of the corpse as a source of impurity on the other had meant that the conditions were not created for carrying out this type of investigation. Even after 1241, the year of the edict of Frederick II which authorized, and indeed stimulated, the use of dissection of corpses, the anatomical investigation was accompanied throughout its path by the activity of artists who have put their skills at the service of scientific studies and of the representation of the human body, which needed scientific investigation to be able to fully express itself.

The practice of observation and the in-depth study of shapes allowed them to reproduce the muscles in a way that exactly correspond to anatomical science and often in the sculptures we can look at muscle groups portrayed in the act of participating in the movement of the body as a whole.

Art can therefore lead us, through its observation, to understand the anatomy represented or the reality of the cure; in fact, over the centuries, it has become a witness to illness, death, and healing activities. Through art it is possible to have evidence of missing pathologies and diseases useful for study, as the Italian doctor, G. Franceschini already wrote about it in 1906, who suggested that "Even the saddest and most painful sides of human life… have been… subject of study by artists, and how even the most pitiful and repulsive sciences of medicine have snatched from the creative brush of the passionate craftsman, pulsating works of life, truth, sentiment. And since beauty is the splendor of truth, it can be said that even the crudest truths of human pathology, clothed in the splendors of art from a skillful hand of craftsman, contributed to the creation of beauty, with sublime works of painting and sculpture" [1].

Art is also a representation of reality and can present itself as a "mirror" for the viewer who can understand emotions and knowledge of activities and meanings related to their personal experiences. Art, as experience, has often guided the pedagogical studies to be used as a tool to develop innovative educational methods [2].

The cognitive reaction to the processes of creation and use of the artistic image can determine knowledge. Starting from this concept, we can understand, first of all, why the observation of art can stimulate us to consider more than one interpretation and therefore more than one possible solution to a single question. Important in this area is the research of R. Arnheim. It explains the connection between visual perception and thought. "Identifying what we see is an act of knowledge," Arnheim tells us according to the psychology of perception [3]. When we look at

#### *Learning through Art in Medical Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101213*

something, mechanisms of understanding are rapidly implemented to recognize and grasp the sense of what is placed before our eyes. Furthermore, thanks to visual stimuli, thoughts and skills to solve problems are automatically set in motion. The careful observation of a work of art activates, in an almost instinctive way, multiple reasoning capable to achieve logical and analytical solutions, thanks to the multiple intelligences useful for cognitive development, including, mostly, the visual-spatial one [4].

In the care sector, there are many references to art as therapy and many studies that show psycho-physiological evidence of the positive effects that artistic practice and its use can have on the person for the promotion of well-being and health.

The role of visual arts and their usefulness, both for therapy and for the promotion of well-being and for the development of clinical skills, is highlighted by the report of the European section of the World Health Organization [5]. Furthermore, exposure to arts or exercising artistic activities can be "therapeutic," lowering cortisol levels and therefore limiting stress [6, 7].
