Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: May 2019

  • Yellow Fever: Harmful habit or new frontier in identity dysphoria?

    Oyinade OsisanyaIjebu Ode, Ogun, Nigeria In 1976, when Fela Kuti, the late Afrobeat legend, released Yellow Fever, the hit masterpiece in which he passionately decried in his powerful, ringing voice, You dey bleach o, you dey bleach, African mother . . . stupid thing, yeye thing, ugly thing. . . you dey bleach o, you…

  • In search of Cassandra

    Charles KelsSan Antonio, Texas, United States “Psychiatrists are [not] always wrong with respect to future dangerousness, only most of the time.”– Barefoot v Estelle, 463 US 880 (1983) My wife is the smartest person I know, but she is not, to the best of my knowledge, omniscient. This qualification would be unnecessary had she not…

  • Learning to eat at thirty

    Hannah HarpoleBern, Switzerland My hippie parents indulged me as a picky eater. At two I proclaimed I was a vegetarian. Around the age of four, I survived solely on yogurt, refusing all other nourishment. I do not exactly know when this morphed into a combination eating disorder of occasional bulimia with a full count of…

  • Adriaen Brouwer: surgery in the tavern

    Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638) was a Flemish Baroque painter who specialized in genre scenes, particularly in taverns. He favored humble, unkempt peasants engaged in various activities, from drunken brawls to fireside chats. In these paintings the village barber-surgeons are shown performing operations on the back and the foot of peasants, who wince from a procedure done…

  • The pains and pleasures of spicy food

    Danielle DalechekNorfolk, Virginia Do you enjoy the painful yet delightful sensation of spicy chili peppers making your mouth feel as if it were on fire? Are you a fan of eating dishes that make your eyes tear and your nose run? If so, it is probably because red pepper contains capsaicin, the substance that gives…

  • Of honors lost and honor regained: Indian origin of plastic surgery

    Neha ChauhanKarnataka, India “A skilful dissembler may disguise in a degree, the expression of mouth, the hat may be slouched over the eyes and the chin may be hidden in the impenetrable thicket of beard but the nose will stand out and make its sign inspite of all precautions. It utterly refuses to be ignored…

  • On your doctor’s orders

    Alexandria SzalanczyWinston-Salem, North Carolina, United States Long before physicians faced a nation crippled by an opioid crisis, their predecessors lived and worked in a nation dominated by cigarettes. By 1953, 47% of Americans smoked cigarettes, including half of all physicians.1 These physician smokers were particularly instrumental to the rise of the cigarette in America. Beginning…

  • Books: Catalysts for health care change

    Sherrie DulworthNew York, New York, United States Some books are enlightening, others are influential, but precious few are transformative. Those rare books are catalysts for change that help propel society into a collective “ah ha” awakening. Think of Silent Spring,1 The Jungle,2 or The Feminine Mystique3 and their respective effect on environmental consciousness, food safety, and women’s…

  • Carroll’s Wonderland

    Yvonne KusiimaKampala, Uganda In 1865 the world was introduced to the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. In the book, a young girl named Alice is feeling bored and drowsy while sitting on the riverbank with her elder sister when she notices a talking,…

  • Homini Verminoso, who created “Orthopaedia”

    Fadlurrahman ManafSurabaya, Indonesia Homini Verminoso (worm man) was the nickname given to the Paris professor Nicolas Andry de Bois-Regard, so called because of his work in parasitology.1,2 In 1700 he wrote a book titled De la generation des vers dans le corps de l’homme. De la nature et des especes de cette maladie, les moyens…