Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

  • Herbert William Page and the railway spine controversy

    Jonathan DavidsonDurham, North Carolina, United States The first passenger railway journey resulted in the death of a prominent British politician.1 During the 1830s and 1840s,2 railway travel became a popular means of transport in Victorian Britain. By the 1850s, it was clear that this revolutionary advance in transportation also caused many injuries that resulted in…

  • Quincy—A crusading doctor played by a crusading actor

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Photo of Robert Ito as Sam and Jack Klugman as Quincy from the television drama Quincy. 1977. NBC Television. Via Wikimedia. The television series Quincy, or Quincy, M.E. [Medical examiner], aired between 1976 and 1983 in the US. One hundred forty-six episodes of this program were televised. Quincy was originally…

  • William Halse Rivers Rivers

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Figure 1 WHR Rivers in public domain, from Wikimedia William Rivers MD FRCP FRS (1864-1922) William Rivers (Fig 1) was a most unusual man, a polymath with careers in neuroscience, ethnology, and psychology. But above all—notwithstanding or perhaps because of personal nervous constraints—he was a man of originality and great…

  • Prisoners on leave: Vietnam veterans and the Golden Age Western

    Edward Harvey  Missoula, Montana, United States   Vietnam War – Hue, 17 Feb 1968 – US Marines Approaching Movie Theater Displays – Photo by Nik Wheeler. Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS. Via Flickr. “I think we all died a little in that damn war.” – The Outlaw Josey Wales   “So…what have you been up to?” When…

  • Red Cross targets emotional impact of climate change

    Sharon CohenNewtown, Connecticut, United States Natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity worldwide. Mother Nature demonstrated her devastating fury in over 300 global events of intense wind, rain, floods, and fire in 2019, and the 2020s should see more of the same. Other issues, such as excessive heat and drought, are causing diminished availability…

  • The psychological impact of facial injury in the First World War: outcomes from the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup

    Andrew Bamji Rye, East Sussex, UK   Figure 1. Aerial view of the Queen’s Hospital, c.1920. The operating theatres are in the horseshoe to the left centre of the photograph. Figure 2. The Plastic Theatre.   Modern warfare, and in particular the use of artillery employed against entrenched troops in the First World War, resulted…

  • Climate trauma in Monique Roffey’s Archipelago

    Lucille Miao New Jersey, United States   Miao, Lucille, “A Leap Forward,” Color Pencil and Acrylic on Paper, 2015 In recent years, the idea of ecological catastrophe has captured the artistic imagination and infiltrated popular culture through novels such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife and television series like teen drama The 100 (2014–). These…

  • “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I

    Alice MacNeill Oxford, United Kingdom   Wilfred Owen plate from Poems (1920). Internet Archive via Wikimedia. Public domain. Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain, — but…

  • Healing in post-genocide Rwanda

    Vigneshwar Subramanian Nivetha Subramanian Cleveland, Ohio, United States   The Apotheosis of War, Vasily Vereshchagin (1871) In April 1994, one of the largest genocides since the Holocaust erupted in Rwanda as the Hutu ethnic majority conducted a targeted slaughter of the Tutsi people.1 In a span of just over 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed.2…

  • The creation of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois: A biographical psychotic neurotic

    Fizzah AliUnited Kingdom     The American dramatist Tennessee Williams wrote several plays, among these The Glass Menagerie,1 The Rose Tattoo,2 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.3 Recurrent themes in his plays are alcoholism, the death of loved ones, repressed sexuality, and isolation. The Glass Menagerie is an exploration of isolation in conjunction with…