Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: mental illness

  • Mental health issues in medical students: The prejudice and the injury

    Amairani Gómez RodríguezPuebla, Mexico   The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway. I had my first panic attack at seventeen. Biochemistry was a total headache; no matter how hard I studied, it was never enough to pass. As a school overachiever, I had never experienced failure. I…

  • Book review: A History of Insanity and the Asylum

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK   Cover of A History of Insanity and the Asylum by Juliana Cummings. Mental health topics have long been a source of fascination. In this new book, author Juliana Cummings explores the history of insanity and asylums from the Middle Ages to the modern era, revealing the sometimes-shocking treatment of…

  • Vincenzo Chiarugi, who freed the insane from their chains

    Vincenzo Chiarugi. Via Wikimedia. Vincenzo Chiarugi was one of the pioneers of a more humane treatment of the mentally ill, along with William Tuke (1732–1822) in York and Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and Étienne-Jean Georget (1795–1828) in Paris. They all lived at a time when those with mental illness were frequently confined in dungeons and ill-treated,…

  • Corn, pellagra, and modern medicine—How an ancient disease was recognized in South Carolina’s state lunatic asylum

    Brody Fogleman Harsh Jha Noel Brownlee JuliSu DiMucci-Ward Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States   James Woods Babcock (1856–1922). Photo courtesy of the Waring Historical Library, MUSC, Charleston, SC. Pellagra is a disease of vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency. Niacin is the precursor for many physiologic processes involving nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), an enzyme that carries out…

  • Henry Cotton: Pulling teeth to cure disease

    Dr. Henry Cotton believed that all mental illnesses were caused by chronic “focal” infections hidden in various organs. He argued that when these infections spread to the brain, they caused inflammation and mental disorders. To cure these conditions, Cotton advocated the aggressive surgical removal of the infected organ, and for this achieved considerable fame in…

  • Margery Kempe: Medieval visions, delusions, and hallucinations

    Margery Kempe (c. 1393 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic who dictated autobiographic notes to a scribe. Married when twenty years old, she had a postpartum psychotic episode after the birth of her first child and went through at least fourteen subsequent pregnancies. Psychotic symptoms, delusions, and hallucinations continued all her life. She had…

  • It’s not the patient who hit you…

    JP SutherlandNorth America Although Christopher’s appearance was extraordinary, there was no sign (not even in retrospect) that he would kick me in the groin within the next hour. He was naked, and standing motionless with his arms held out perpendicularly from his sides. If anyone tried to cover him with a blanket then he would…

  • Drapetomania: A “disease” that never was

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Slavery is next to hell.” – Harriet Tubman “And before I’d be a slave,I’ll be buried in my grave…”– Oh, Freedom, African-American spiritual Slavery arrived in what later became the United States in 1619. Slaves were used mainly as agricultural laborers. In the US South, that meant working with tobacco and cotton…

  • Understanding so little: Cinema and mass shootings

    Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, was serendipitously preceded by a trailer for Gangster Squad, which showed a fictitious shooting of a movie theater audience. Filmmakers have revisited the topic of mass shootings and their aftermath in portrayals not only of…

  • Qualis artifex pereo

    Henri Colt  Laguna Beach, California, United States   Man sitting. Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash. This short story is a work of fiction. Translation: “What an artist the world is losing with me!” — cited by Suctonius, The Twelve Caesars, Nero 49; Loeb ed., 2:177   Michael had jet black hair and sorrowful brown…