Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: January 2017

  • Nabokov’s first masterpiece

    Nicholas KangAuckland, New Zealand Gradually the lights disappeared, the phantoms grew sparser, and a wave of oppressive blackness washed over him. The Defense, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, describes the mental breakdown and ultimate suicide of its fictional protagonist Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. It is a remarkable literary rendering of what might be termed the process…

  • “Super” heroes: Special powers in deaf characters

    Paul DakinLondon, United Kingdom In 2012 Marvel Comics produced a cover featuring New Hampshire Senator Lou D’Allesandro’s four-year-old grandson Anthony as Blue Ear, a superhero wearing a hearing aid. Anthony refused the prosthetic because superheroes did not wear them. His mother contacted the company hoping to find an inspirational example and received the specially-created artwork…

  • Where no birds sing: tuberculosis in Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

    Putzer HungSt. Louis, Missouri, United States O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,Alone and palely loitering?The sedge has wither’d from the lake,And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!So haggard and so woe-begone?The squirrel’s granary is full,And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy browWith anguish moist and fever dew,And on thy…

  • Better than booze

    Ruth DemingWillow Grove, Pennsylvania, United States The following is a work of fiction. “Mom, Laura’s invited me to sleep over? Can I go?” “Sure, Lisa. Just make sure you’ve done your homework.” “I finished it.” Laura Kennedy was my best friend since childhood. We lived next door to one another in the wealthy community of…

  • Washer of the dead

    Ruth DemingWillow Grove, Pennsylvania, United States Dead bodies were nothing new to Sarah Washington. As a registered nurse, she peacefully viewed the stunning poses of the dead at her first job, a suburban hospital that closed shortly after she was hired. God had chosen her, she was assured, as she closed the eyes of an…

  • Does art belong in a doctor’s office?

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Does art belong in a doctor’s office? According to Sinclair Lewis, a resounding Yes!—so long as the art hangs on antiseptic white walls. In his 1925 novel Arrowsmith, Lewis described the ideal medical reception room—a combination of two warring schools of thought, the Tapestry and the Antiseptic. His father was…

  • The doctor in bed with the patient

    Solomon PosenSydney, Australia The act of getting into bed with a patient, which would normally be regarded as indecent and highly unprofessional, may be totally free of lecherous implications. Strong’s doctor has been summoned to deliver an elderly primipara, who lives with her crofter husband in an isolated one-roomed cottage on an island off the…

  • The vindictive departmental chairman: a hospital tale of the 1970’s

    Solomon PosenSydney, Australia The main plot in Neil Ravin’s M.D.1 is the ongoing tension at Manhattan Hospital2 between two unevenly matched protagonists: Professor Maxwell Baptist, the Chairman of Medicine and Dr. William Ryan, a somewhat naïve resident who dislikes “kissing ass,” particularly Baptist’s ass. Predictably this attitude annoys the chairman, and Ryan pays the appropriate…

  • Chekhov: “Ward No. 6”

    Stanley Gutiontov Chicago, Illinois, United States   Anton Chekhov “Andrei Yefimich understood everything. Without saying a word, he walked to the bed Nikita had given him and sat down; seeing that Nikita was waiting, he stripped naked and became embarrassed. He then put on his hospital clothes; the pants were too short, the shirt was…

  • What November may bring: The first 37 days of surgical anesthesia

    A.J. WrightBirmingham, Alabama, United States In medical history October 16 is known as “Ether Day” to commemorate dentist William Morton’s 1846 demonstration of ether inhalation for a surgical patient of Dr. John Collins Warren. The event is often described as the first public ether anesthetic because it took place before an audience of physicians and…