In our pillar essay, What Is the Connection Between Arts and Medicine?, we followed the long conversation between creativity and care: the therapies that heal, the illustrations that teach, and the artists who made the human body their subject. If that idea stayed with you, these five books are where to take it further.

We chose them to cover the whole field, from the hard evidence behind arts in health to the practice of art therapy, the mystery of music and the brain, the meeting of anatomy and beauty, and one unforgettable life in which pain became painting. Some are scholarly and some are pure pleasure to read, but all of them treat art and medicine as two halves of one human story.

All five are widely available on Amazon in print and, in most cases, digital editions. Prices and formats vary over time, so check the current listing before you buy.

How to choose your first book

You do not need to read all five. Start with the one that matches how you come to this field:

• You want the evidence: begin with Arts in Health by Daisy Fancourt.
• You want to see practice: begin with Art Therapy and Health Care, edited by Cathy A. Malchiodi.
• You love music: begin with Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.
• You are drawn to the history and beauty of anatomy: begin with The Anatomical Venus by Joanna Ebenstein.
• You prefer a human story: begin with Frida by Hayden Herrera.

The case for arts in health

1. Arts in Health: Designing and Researching Interventions by Daisy Fancourt

Written by the researcher who went on to lead the World Health Organization’s landmark review of the field, this is the clearest single guide to how and why the arts support health. Fancourt lays out the evidence, then shows how good arts-in-health projects are actually designed, run, and studied.

It is the ideal starting point for anyone who wants the serious case rather than the feel-good version. Rigorous but readable, it turns a warm idea into a real discipline you can trust.

What sets the book apart is its attention to method. Fancourt explains how arts-in-health projects are designed, run and evaluated, and how researchers ask whether a programme really works. If you have ever wondered how a singing group or a hospital art project goes from a good idea to credible evidence, this is the book that shows the steps. It is most useful for people who work in healthcare, community programmes or arts funding, though a curious general reader can follow it with a little patience.

2. Art Therapy and Health Care edited by Cathy A. Malchiodi

One of the field’s leading voices gathers real examples of art therapy at work across hospitals and medical settings, from cancer and chronic illness to trauma and rehabilitation. Each chapter shows practitioners using image-making to help patients cope, communicate, and heal.

This is the best entry point for understanding what art therapists actually do, and for whom. It moves the conversation from theory into the ward, the clinic, and the bedside.

The book gathers contributions on art therapy in a range of health care settings, so you can read the chapters in the order that suits you and go straight to the topic that matches your interest. A recurring idea in art therapy is that artistic skill is not the point: making images can give people another way to express what is hard to say in words. It suits students, caregivers and clinicians, and anyone who wants a grounded picture of what art therapy looks like in practice.

Music, the brain, and the body

3. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

The beloved neurologist’s warm, story-driven exploration of what music does to us: patients who recover speech through song, people gripped by sudden musical obsessions, and the deep hold melody keeps on memory long after other memories fade. Sacks writes with rare humanity about the meeting of medicine and art.

It is the most enjoyable way into why music therapy works, and a moving reminder that the brain is wired for song. You will never listen the same way again.

Part of the pleasure is how Sacks moves between individual case histories and bigger questions. He writes about the many ways music can affect the brain and the people who live with it, and about how a familiar tune can reach a person when little else can. It is a book you can dip into one chapter at a time, and it rewards readers who are curious about why music matters so much to us.

4. The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death and the Ecstatic by Joanna Ebenstein

A gorgeously illustrated look at the eighteenth-century wax models where medical teaching and high art became one and the same. Ebenstein traces how the study of the body has always been bound up with beauty, wonder, and mortality, in objects that are at once anatomical specimens and works of art.

It is a vivid way to see the second great strand of our pillar, the body as subject, up close. Strange, beautiful, and unforgettable, it lingers long after the last page.

The book looks at the anatomical Venuses, the wax models made to teach the inside of the human body, and asks why so many were made so beautiful. It is as much art history as medical history, with generous illustrations, and it raises questions that still matter: who is allowed to look at a body, how beauty and knowledge overlap, and what we owe to the dead. Some images are graphic, so it suits readers who are comfortable with anatomy. Artists, designers and anyone drawn to the history of medicine will find it fascinating.

Art and the experience of illness

5. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

The definitive life of the artist who turned illness, injury, and a lifetime of pain into some of the most honest self-portraits ever made. Herrera shows how Kahlo painted her own body back to meaning, making art out of the very experience medicine could not fully mend.

It is the perfect close to a reading list about creativity and the body: a portrait of art as survival, and of a woman who refused to let suffering have the last word.

Herrera traces how childhood polio, a serious bus accident in Kahlo’s teens, and years of surgeries and long stretches in bed shaped both her body and her art, including the mirror and easel that let her keep painting while she was confined. Read alongside the other four titles, it shows the patient’s side of the story: a person turning illness into images.

Want to keep going? Browse everything in our Arts and Medicine section, or explore more reading lists in Fanarts Corner: Books.

Final thoughts

Read together, these five books make the same case our Arts and Medicine section is built on: that creativity and care have always belonged in the same room. It is evidence in Fancourt, practice in Malchiodi, the wonder of the brain in Sacks, the beauty of the body in Ebenstein, and the courage of a single life in Herrera.

Start wherever your curiosity pulls you. Whether you come to this field as a patient, a maker, a caregiver, or simply a reader who has felt steadied by a song or a sketchbook, there is a book here to deepen it, and a whole section of the magazine waiting to carry the conversation on. Return anytime to the pillar, What Is the Connection Between Arts and Medicine?, for the bigger picture.

Editor’s note, October 4, 2026: we revised the book descriptions in this article after checking them against publisher and institutional sources.