Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: January 2018

  • Emptiness Melancholia: depression sweet depression

    Camila Machado Minas Gerais, Brazil   Ophelia, 1851 John Everett Millais. Oil on Canvas. Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.1 – Andrew Solomon   Vitality had seemed to seep away from me through the years, stopping me from feeling joy, sadness, affection, and love. I felt empty…

  • Muthulakshmi Reddi: physician, activist, and social revolutionary

    Sumana Vardhan Chicago, Illinois, United States   “Muthulakshmi, the medical student.” India International Centre, V. Shanta, 16 Mar. 2012 Born in 1886 under British rule in Tamil Nadu, India, Muthulakshmi Reddi faced an era of gender inequalities and fated child marriage. Despite the social limitations of the time, Reddi’s parents encouraged her interest in learning,…

  • Thomas Bayes and Bayes’ Theorem in medicine

    Geoffrey Baird Seattle, Washington, United States   The work of an eighteenth-century British clergyman can help you when someone forgets to switch off their turn signal Medical nomenclature is often ridiculous. One professor in my medical school used to say of misnomers in medicine that they were like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither…

  • “Mississippi Appendectomy” and other stories: When silence is complicity

    Alida Rol Eugene, Oregon, United States  Patient on the Table, 2017. Watercolor by Alida Rol, private collection. The world moves fast and it would rather pass u by than 2 stop and c what makes u cry. – Tupac Shakur, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” She sits perched on the exam table in a too-large gown.…

  • Cultivating clinical compassion with cultural encounters

    Jeffrey Lee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   Sunset along the beaches of Sant Antoni de Calonge The calm waves of the Mediterranean played a lullaby as I walked along the beach, the fine-grained sand gently caressing my toes. I noticed a small group of women massaging each other’s backs. I awkwardly watched them from the…

  • Montefiore: instrument for social good

    Grace SotomayorCharlotte, North Carolina, United States At this time in the United States, there is heated debate and rancor about whether health care is a right or a privilege and how and if our country should pay for healthcare. However, some members of one American institution, the hospital, have been quietly continuing to innovate, contribute…

  • Age needs a graying goddess of prophecy and her name shall be Senexa

    Margaret Morganroth Gullette Waltham, MA, USA   The Libyan Sibyl, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel Age needs a tutelary deity, a woke goddess for the Age of Alzheimer’s and the Age of Longevity. We all deserve a powerful, honored, and glorious crone, representing our values and our value. Here, transparently, before your open eyes, I venture to create…

  • The free diaper delivery and chat service

    Jean MathewsCanada It surprised me that she could laugh. How could a person who was constantly leaking urine laugh? All her sarees and her tiny room smelled of urine. The smell was stubborn and enduring, compelling us to inhale meekly as we would at a public urinal. The smell also compelled her to spend all…

  • Blame

    Jack Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States   US Army Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter With so much intentional killing and death in war, one might think that an occasional accidental or natural death would go unnoticed and uninvestigated. This was not my experience. In war, killing and death are often viewed through a blameless lens.…

  • Visitation from the village

    David IraborOyo State, Nigeria The aim of a surgeon is to ameliorate the conditions of patients with the skills you have learned. Since surgery is a science involving aspects of the patient’s anatomy, physiology, and pathology, morbidity and mortality in most patients can be explained scientifically. What many of us are not trained for are…