Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: April 2017

  • The origins and development of the Lewis Hospitals

    Nicola MacArthur Aberdeen, Scotland   The original gates to the Lewis Cottage Hospital. Restored and reinstated in the grounds of private houses built on the site of the original hospital. During World War Two, metal in the United Kingdom was salvaged for essential munitions processing but the salvage operation did not reach this far north…

  • The lost papyrus? Eureka! An African voice

    Ohakpougwu EmmanuelAccra, Ghana The year is 1279 BC, the beginning of the reign of Ramesses II. There are cries and incantations as the priests mumble words and family stand by my bedside alongside pots of medicines for my ailment. I lie on my death bed and drift through the memories of our achievements. If I…

  • Measure of the heart: Santorio Santorio and the pulsilogium

    Richard de GrijsDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China The heart is a musical organ. The irregularity of one’s inhalation and exhalation of air defies musicality, while the involuntary rumbling of moving gas in the intestines is embarrassingly analogous to the timbre of the tuba or trombone. Biomedical terminology and poetry are seemingly antithetical, but of the heart they…

  • Redefining the war on cancer

    Justin Shea Ontario, Canada   The Battlefield of Cancer Treatment. Private Collection by Timamit, Mar 13, 2017. Ever since Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, the public has been convinced that the only way to deal with the disease is through combat1.  But after forty years with destructive remedies such as chemo and immunological…

  • Support players in the story of an illness – how to behave

    Fergus Shanahan Ireland   Those who support in silence and support by their presence. Kiran Sandhu,  Feb 24, 2017 One of the poems written by Seamus Heaney after recovering from a stroke was inspired by the well-known biblical story in which a sick man is miraculously cured. However, the Nobel laureate was drawn neither to the…