Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winter 2017

  • Music and the brain

    Rayda Joomun Mauritius   “The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colours in your mind” – Maria Cristina Mena Music  brings a smile to our faces. Yet this abstract entity has no conventional defining criteria. Proust acknowledged this: “Music helped me to descend into myself, to discover new things; the…

  • Was the Mozart Effect evident before the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

    Harishnath Ramachandran England, United Kingdom   “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” – Plato   Statue of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) taken by Mrs. Sanju Ramachandran (Vienna 2009) The word music is derived from the Greek word “mousike”, meaning art of the muses. It is considered a form of…

  • Physician: study thyself

    Susan HurleyVictoria, Australia In 2016 one man died and five others suffered brain damage during a drug trial in Rennes, France.1 A similar disaster occurred during the 2006 London trial of a novel monoclonal antibody: six men experienced an immediate systemic inflammatory response and became critically ill with multi-organ failure.2 These tragedies are a poignant…

  • Bari in the seventh cholera pandemic

    Salvatore Barbuti Moro, Italy Domenico Martinelli Rosa Prato Foggia, Italy   Gazzetta del Mezzoggiorno, Bari, Italy, 31st August 1973. Photo Courtesy of Prof. Salvatore Barbuti’s private collection. It all began on a quiet warm afternoon in August 1973 when an infectious diseases specialist called his friend in public health and hesitantly asked for a test…

  • Public health measures derived from the Jewish tradition: II. Washing and cleaning

    Tova Chein,Mark Epelbaum,Robert SternNew York, New York, United States Introduction Historically, Jewish contributions to public health measures have not been given adequate attribution. The previous article in this series (Hektoen International, Winter 2016) documented the ancient Jewish recognition of the importance of: The ritual washing of hands There are many forms of washing identified in the…

  • Huetation

    Sooo-z Mastropietro Westport, CT     Inspiration can appear unexpectedly just like progress born from sickness. Huetation, inspired by Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and film documentary The Way of All Flesh took awe from an 8 second visual of mutating cancer cells, displayed with a sequence of 3 images in…

  • Queer and unked: Disability, monstrosity, and George Eliot’s “Sympathy”

    Christina Lee Kent, United Kingdom   Silas finds Eppie. Eliot, George. The Jenson Society, NY. In The Mill on the Floss, the intellectual and sensitive Philip Wakem, who has a curved spine from a fall in infancy, is called “a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.”1(II.vi) In the manuscript Philip Wakem is branded…

  • Portraits of vision: Sir Joshua Reynolds

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States   Fig 1. Joshua Reynolds, Self Portrait, 1788, Royal Collection Trust, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The subject of this portrait wears wiry, diminutive round spectacles, lending a distinctly pedantic flair. Yet gazing out is none other than Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), one of the greatest English painters in history…

  • Suicide in medical school

    Trevor KleeCambridge, MA, United States Depression and suicide are difficult subjects to write about because they are unpleasant and have at least a faint tinge of moral failure. Moreover, the enormity of the feelings involved dwarfs the attempts to portray them in writing. Perhaps the best written description of suicidal ideation comes from David Foster…

  • Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904). The study of movement in the functions of life: eclecticism and inventiveness

    Philippe Campillo Lille, France   “[…] I think, together with Claude Bernard, that movement is the most important act, in that all the functions come into play in order to achieve it.”1    Fig 1. Marey, Etienne Jules (1830–1904) Courtesy of Collection BIU Health Medicine, Open License. Marey had a long and distinguished scientific career…