Conclusion: Speculative Medicine, Speculative Fictions

Abstract

This closing section looks at the role of imagination in highly experimental medicine. The emphasis on imagination, speculation, and anticipation in the field of research resonates with the genre of speculative fiction, which includes science fiction and fantasy. In a paired reading of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau and a Life magazine account of the early clinical trials of dialysis, we can see how the world-making imagination that drives speculative fiction also opens up the possibility of new horizons in medicine.