Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: April 2019

  • Avulsions

    Torree McGowanCulver, Oregon, United States There are moments in life that serve as a dividing line. These instants sharply incise our worlds into before and after, the then and the now. Moments shimmer like a crystalline barrier, allowing you to see so clearly through to what was, but that past is just out of reach.…

  • The time between our hands

    Samantha BelowMilwaukee, Wisconsin, United States Thread passes from the tools in your hands to be pulled by mine. You suture the vessels. I clear the path of knots. Our posture is separated by inches, our hearts by hand-breadths. Our hands are identical in the vibrations of our nervous systems; mine reflect a lack of experience,…

  • Defining medicine

    Amira AthanasiosWalnut Creek, California, United States Defining Medicine. The bolded script screamed at me from a massive poster hung six stories high along the side of the university hospital on my first day of medical school. Like most millennials, I pursued medicine with a deep conviction to make a difference. Coming from a humanities background,…

  • Enfreakment in the medicalization of difference

    Camille KrollChicago, Illinois, USA Exalted showman P.T. Barnum was thrilled when he discovered Joice Heth, a severely disabled elderly slave woman. In grotesque detail, he assessed the value of his first sideshow acquisition with relish: I was favorably struck with the appearance of the old woman . . . She might almost as well have…

  • Character, genius, and a missing person in medicine

    Carrie BarronAustin, Texas, USA “He is the most un-talked about, unacknowledged, unknown and most important figure in the African American community…A genius.”1 In 1944, a surgeon with his trusted guide by his side performed the very first open-heart surgery on a fifteen-month-old, nine-pound girl. 1930, Nashville. A twenty-year old African-American man, honors student, and son…

  • The incidental reach of pattern in Medicine and Art

    Eric WillUnited Kingdom “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,Or what’s a(n artist’s) Heaven for? . . .”— After Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto,” 1855 1,2 (author’s italics) The bedside is a comfortable thinking space for clinicians. On occasion, just there, they bring to mind the clinical patterns that point to a differential…

  • The promise of a perfect smile

    Liz JonesAberystwyth, Wales, UK My gran would pull a miniature silver blade from its mother-of-pearl handle and slice the apple into six pieces to share between the two of us. Eating it that way aided digestion, she would tell me. I was not sure what digestion was, or why it needed our aid, but I…

  • How not to make the consultation sexy

    Claire ElliottLondon, Ukrain Why do patients allow physicians to carry out an intimate examination barely ten minutes after they have met? As John Berger wrote in 1967, “We give the doctor access to our bodies. Apart from the doctor, we only grant such access voluntarily to lovers – and many are frightened to do even…

  • Our divisive political climate and our ability to treat patients without bias

    Shane SobrioWashington, DC, United States Politics are divisive. That should not be a shock to anyone. However, the political climate in the USA at the moment is more than just divisive. Lately, there seems to be an underlying disdain for those we disagree with, in a way that even my grandparents say they have never…

  • Amnesia remembered

    Karen LangerNew York, New York, United States Amnesia, the medical record noted. He developed amnesia after a mechanical fall on black ice, resulting in a mild traumatic brain injury and a hip fracture. After surgery to repair the hip, there was onset of metabolic encephalopathy, and between the encephalopathy and the brain injury he developed…