Month: May 2018
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Summer Essay Contest
(Currently Closed) We invite you to participate in the Hektoen International Summer Essay Contest on the theme of Food and the Body. Please submit essays about food and drink as related to health and the body, using the lens of the humanities. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to: the history of food, famine,…
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Tending Babe Ruth’s grave
Jacob Appel New York City, New York, United States Babe Ruth’s grave in Gate of Heaven Cemetery We’ve got our share of notables and has-beens, Mobsters and vaudeville stars and even Bess Houdini, Harry’s widow, tucked under polished Barre granite, But the Babe’s our star attraction. Old-time fans And kids stuffed into vintage…
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Jewish ritual immersion in the mikveh and the concept of communal immunity
Robert Stern Piotr Kozlowski David Forstein New York City, New York, United States Figure 1. Mikveh in Palestine from the Biblical era The mikveh may be seen as part of the sociobiological process assuring the gradual cross exposure of community members to the biomes of other members. It also provides controlled exposure to the biomes…
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The painter and the potter: voices in color and texture
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Drawn to this painting of a vase at the edge of a table, I pause and think, “Don’t we all live on the edges of life, on stratums of the precarious and uncertain?” Jimmy Lueders’ Armand’s Pot II projects from the wall on which it hangs at the Woodmere Art…
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Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and their doctor are dead
Joshua Niforatos Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States ROSENCRANTZ: “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering – stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I…
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Letter to my body
Tereza Crvenkovic Sydney, Australia Me with My Body (author). Photographer: Lenny Christou Dear Body, Here we are clinging to this rope, swinging from side-to-side, above this great big stage with its pitch-black backdrop. Anything could happen to us. Anything. How did it come to this? How did we get here? I do not have the…
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Haunting poetic characteristics: the dissection scene from Doctor Zhivago
Timo HannuHelsinki, Finland Doctor Zhivago, a novel by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak, tells the story of physician-poet Yura Zhivago during the turmoil of the first decades of the twentieth century in Russia. The character of Dr. Zhivago is portrayed as follows:1 “Though he was greatly drawn to art and history, he scarcely hesitated over…
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The Steno Memorial Hospital of Copenhagen
Anabelle S. Slingerland Leiden, Netherlands Where science and human nature meet Figure 1. Niels Stenseens Hospital including apple orchard In November 2017 the Niels Steensens Hospital or Steno Memorial Hospital of Copenhagen, celebrated its 85th anniversary (Figure 1). It was named after the distinguished Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno(nis) (1638-1688), a modern-day Renaissance man, autodidact…
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Aspects of distancing
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Corfu Island, Greece. Author Photo. I will call him Bill. We had been unaware of each other’s existence until we first met as elected members of a professional committee in our local medical association. In this capacity we had been working together for several years, convening every two or three months…
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George Gordon Lord Byron and his limp
JMS Pearce Fig 1. Plaque of Byron erected in Westminster 4/10/2012 Few would dispute that Lord Byron (Fig 1) was both a poetic prodigy and a flamboyant rogue. George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824), was born on 22 January 1788 at Holles Street, London, son of Captain John (“Mad Jack”) Byron and his…