Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: March 2019

  • Scarred for life

    Shanda McCutcheonCalgary, Alberta, Canada Most mornings I wake and it does not seem like it happened at all. Still half asleep, I step under the cascading waters of a warm shower without even thinking about it. Life does not seem much different than it did a year ago, except that then I was embarking on…

  • La Pieta

    Rachel FleishmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States A mother holds her dead child. His body flops open without resistance, freshly dead. His head is cocked back, shoulder lifted, arms release the last vestige of grip. Her face sullen, her hand beside him open and offering, she holds but does not touch her son. A single moment of…

  • Ella’s addiction: The story of a mother and morphine

    Lisa MulleneauxNew York, New York, United States Doctors today are relearning lessons from a century ago when overprescription of opioids created an epidemic of addicts, most of whom were upper-class or middle-class women. Eugene O’Neill’s mother, Mary “Ella” Quinlan O’Neill, was one of them, and the playwright’s harrowing portrait of her as Mary Tyrone in…

  • The book that galvanized a health care transformation

    Sherrie DulworthNew York, United States One of the major health care sea changes of the past half-century did not originate from the usual sources of scientific research, technological development, or even clinical trial-and-error. Instead, a book written for a general audience galvanized a health care transformation. While the cultural revolution of the 1960’s had ushered…

  • Scars

    Morgan AlexanderDayton, Ohio, United States “I see you’ve got some scars here,” the doctor said, gesturing to two faint, thin lines that ran down both sides of the patient’s neck. “What’s that about?” The patient in the room with us was covered in scars across his neck and abdomen. Hesitantly, he confessed that the scars…

  • Between frames: Liminality and the emergence of self

    Jane PersonsIowa City, Iowa, United States The development of compassion, along with wisdom, skill, and communication, is pivotally important to the practice of medicine.1 Perhaps even more importantly, development of personal character – such as through a medical education that emphasizes ethics, professionalism, and the humanities – is critical to the emergence of effective and…

  • The beauty of gender diversity

    Lisa ShugollAsheville, North Carolina, USA The arts have always provided a rich source of material for the type of introspection and contemplation that can deepen our ability to respond empathetically to those whose concerns and life experiences are vastly different from our own. This capacity for empathy is especially important for clinicians hoping to provide…

  • Becoming Judith: The connection between Italian Baroque and anatomy lab

    Emily NghiemDetroit, Michigan, USA Art and medicine are not two things that seem to fall together naturally. When considering an example of medicine depicted in art, a reasonable and literal choice would be Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic, where a team of doctors is performing live surgery before an intently fascinated audience. So many depictions…

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    JMS PearceHull, United Kingdom Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) conceived the original idea of evolution by natural selection entirely independently of Charles Darwin.1 In the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey, next to Charles Darwin’s memorial, is a white marble roundel with a profile relief bust to the memory of Alfred Russel Wallace, erected in 1915.…

  • Rewiring the brain

    Paul RoopraiHamilton, Ontario, Canada Approach as a medical illustrator The modern-day perception of mindfulness and meditation is inextricably linked to the mind, which is associated physically with the brain. The rendering of the brain at the top of the poster represents the biological processes that mindfulness promotes in the brain. The renditions of the neuron…