Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: October 2020

  • Terminal digit preference

    Marshall Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States Numbers that end in zero motivate and energize people. Recall Y2K, when the world celebrated on January 1, 2000. The irresistibility of zeros resulted in everyone celebrating on the wrong date: the new millennium started on January 1, 2001, not 2000. The first year of the Julian calendar in…

  • Sarah’s lesson

    Henri ColtLaguna Beach, California, United States Sarah put her hand on my forearm and dug a fingernail into my white coat. “Doc, I druther you not call my husband in just yet,” she said. “Doc?” I smiled. “You never call me Doc.” I finished installing the morphine pump and set the dose at an hourly…

  • Hope quarantined

    Prasad IyerSingapore Poet’s statement This fictional poem expresses the feelings of a migrant separated from his family during the COVID pandemic. Hope quarantined Quarantine forceth divorced soulsDistanced families and broken wholesShards of thoughts, impaling my core Locked down borders’ hearts a sore Shallow slumber, uneasy sense Worries, anxieties common hence.  Weeks and months in the twilight zoneTogether in…

  • Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie: William James Mayo (1861–1938) and Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939)

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States The father of the Mayo brothers, William Worall Mayo, was born in a village near Manchester, England, in 1819. His father died when he was seven years old, but his mother managed to have him tutored in Latin and Greek, and later he took private lessons with James Dalton, a…

  • Teddy Roosevelt: Did a speech really save his life?

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Teddy Roosevelt uttered those words outside the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, shortly after he was shot by…

  • Can behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia salvage Semmelweis?

    Faraze A. NiaziJack E. RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Remember me for the mind I had; not the mind a disease created.  Few physicians have made a more significant observation than did Ignaz Semmelweis.1 In 1847 he took over two obstetric divisions at the Vienna General Hospital. In Division 1, where babies were delivered by…

  • Everyone’s pain

    David Nathaniel YimBaltimore, Maryland, United States During a grueling two-week backpacking trip, I made the conscious commitment to become a physician. I did not realize at the time, but the painfulness of my trek was only beginning. I knew that I had to achieve excellent grades and top test scores. So, I spent years studying…

  • “Do I look gay to you?”

    Elena HillNew York, United States When I first went to Tijuana to the US-Mexican border to volunteer as a physician, I was expecting to see women fleeing abuse, men escaping gang violence, and families pursuing a better life. I was not expecting to see a large LGBTQ population. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that…

  • The Doctors Cori, carbohydrate metabolism, and the Nobel prize

    Energy in animals and humans is stored in the body in the form of glycogen. Starch, a similar molecule but less branched, serves the same function in plants. Glycogen, discovered by Claude Bernard in 1856, is stored primarily in the liver (about 120 grams) and in muscle (about 400 grams), and to a lesser amount…