Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Past Issues

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    DA VINCI AT 500 Published in December, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .   The year 2019 celebrates the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest painters and polymaths of all time. Born near Florence in 1452, he moved to Milan at…

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    AMERICAN HEART PIONEERS Published in November, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .     ALFRED BLALOCK & VIVIEN THOMAS     1930 Nashville. A twenty-year old African American man, honors student, and son of a carpenter had his eyes set on becoming a physician. This was not unfounded.…

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    LATIN AMERICA Published in September, 2019 H E K T O R A M A   . AFRICAN AMERICAN MEDICAL PIONEERS The first hospital in the Americas was built by Fray Nicolás de Ovando from 1503 to 1508 in Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti). Named Hospital de San Nicolás de Bari (I), it was located in…

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    WOMEN IN MEDICINE Published in November, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .     ALICE HAMILTON     The squalid streets of working-class Chicago in the late nineteenth century would have been something of a shock to the girl who grew up in a sheltered but educated household…

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    THE GLORY OF FRANCE Published in September 2019 H E K T O R A M A   .     ARCHITECTURE AND THE FRENCH HOSPITAL       Parisian hospitals, like those in many European capitals, are the results of years of accretion. Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest Parisian hospital, was founded by Saint Landry in…

  • Adrianus Spigelius, the last great Paduan anatomist

    In his time the Flemish physician Adrianne van den Spiegel (often referred to by the latinized name of Adrianus Spigelius) was the most renowned practicing clinician in the city of Padua. An accomplished anatomist, he was left with only meager eponymous pickings: the caudate (Spigelian) lobe of the liver and some more obscure structures around…

  • Past Winners

    Hektoen International honors the winners and runners up of the Hektoen Grand Prix essay contests    2018 Abigail Cline, Winner Tales from the crypt:  the mosaic symbolism of Louis Pasteur’s tomb Jack Coulehan, Runner-Up The Education of Doctor Chekhov Alida Rol, Runner-Up “Mississippi Appendectomy” and other stories: when silence is complicity   2017 Anika Khan, Winner – Essay Locked-in…

  • Jan Steen: quack doctors visit lovesick maidens

    Like his contemporary Molière, the Dutchman Jan Steen makes fun of quack doctors, often shown in ridiculous costumes visiting young love-sick or pregnant women. In the Lovesick Maiden (Fig.1, Metropolitan Museum) the diagnosis is suggested by the painting of a Cupid above the door, the bed on the right, and the bed-warmer on the lower…

  • The impact of technology on healthcare

    Singh Yadav Tamil Nadu, India   Double doors swing open as paramedics rush a burn victim into the hospital’s Emergency Department. A nurse checks the patient’s pulse and vitals, while another takes a blood sample and deposits it to a nearby machine. A scanning device determines the wound size and depth and guides an attached…

  • Summer Essay Contest

    (Currently Closed) We invite you to participate in the Hektoen International Summer Essay Contest on the theme of Food and the Body. Please submit essays about food and drink as related to health and the body, using the lens of the humanities. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to: the history of food, famine,…