Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: May 2019

  • Can the neuroaesthetics response unleash a path to psychosis?

    C. Ann ConnCovington, Louisiana, United States How does the brain perceive beauty and what is the biology of transcendent artistic appreciation? Is this epiphanic reaction hijacked during delusional thinking and psychosis? Perhaps the emerging field of neuroaesthetics can offer clues. After I witnessed the transformation and fall of my two sons, Austin and Colin, into…

  • How we love

    Linda ClarkeGuelph, Ontario, Canada The communities of health care and medicine are richly storied. For almost three decades, I have invited people in those communities to tell me their stories and they have been generous in their telling. A story told can be image-laden and many of those images become part of my own story.…

  • Quinine and the cinchona plant: Gain or bane for Africa?

    Lom NingBamenda, Republic of Cameroon “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all doctors in the Empire.”1 This statement by Winston Churchill referred to the bitter-tasting substance in tonic water, quinine. This antimalarial alkaloid did save lives, but also propelled the economy and prestige of the British Empire as it…

  • Fat by choice: A quest for meaning

    Amer ToutonjiCharleston, South Carolina, USA An early bird, Brian wakes up no later than 5:30 am to get on with the first meal of the day: twelve eggs and ten sausages, or their equivalent. Most recently weighing in at 530 pounds, Bryan, or Bull, as he likes to be called, is constantly outgrowing his clothes…

  • How to save a life

    Sam CampbellMoh’D IbrahimJohnson City, Tennessee, United States My wife is in Texas, threatening to file divorce papers. I am here, 996 miles away, trying to find Mrs. Smith who has wandered out of her room searching the entire hospital for her dead husband. When I find her on the fourth floor, she asks if I…

  • Two tales of talipes equinovarus

    Christopher WalkerBielsko-Biala, Poland Congenital talipes equinovarus, better known as clubfoot, is a poorly understood but surprisingly common medical condition. According to Ansar et al, it affects about one in one thousand newborns, though this figure varies by country.1 There is a roughly fifty-fifty split between those born with bilateral clubfoot and those with only one…

  • Luigi Galvani: beginnings of electrophysiology

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Physicist or physician? Scientist or healer? Artificially, these are divisions that have classified doctors through the ages. Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) (Fig 1.) showed that it was possible to be an amalgam of both. The word “galvanize” derives not from physics but from Galvani, a medical doctor who studied electricity in animal…

  • Samuel Clossy’s Observations: An unrecognized contribution to the origin of anatomical pathology

    Guillermo QuinonezAncaster, ON, CanadaLaurette GeldenhuysHalifax, NS, Canada It is often stated in the medical history literature that Anatomical Pathology was established as a modern science in 1761 when Giovanni Battista Morgagni published Site and Causes of Disease (Figure 1) in Italy.1,2 However, the development of the discipline was likely more complex, occurring somewhat concurrently in…

  • Pig-tail probe

    Zeynel KarciogluCharlottesville, Virginia, United States I read with great interest Dr. Stanley Gutiontov’s article entitled “Pig man: pigs in medicine from Galen to transgenic xenotransplantation” in Hektoen International, and it reminded me of an amusing “pig-related” experience I had years ago. The twisted tobacco leaves that sailors smoked in the 1700s resembled the curly tail…

  • Dangerous inheritance

    Merle BorgSan Diego, California, United States It was an ordinary accident. Two boys driving to high school had topped a hill too fast, and wedged their small pickup under a stopped truck. Hundred-foot skid marks explained it all. Both boys were pinned in the wreckage, legs folded in odd directions. The driver was convulsing thick…