Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: July 2021

  • Motivation at work

    Migel Jayasinghe UK This article was previously published by the author with EZineArticles in 2010. It has been edited by Hektoen International staff and republished here with the author’s permission. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Art by Chiquo. CC BY-SA 4.0. Via Wikimedia. After the industrial revolution, large numbers of workers were needed in mills and factories to mass produce goods…

  • Research opportunities for medical students and residents

    Edward Tabor Washington, DC, United States   Portrait of W. T. O Forssmann from an unknown French newspaper. Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Medical residents who engage in scientific research obtain numerous advantages that may enhance their careers. They acquire analytical skills, refine their critical thinking, and may develop better future training opportunities. Unfortunately, scientific…

  • Art appreciation under the radar

    Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States I was on my way to an art gallery in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to view the art of a painter who once lived there, Normal Rockwell. On the way, I stopped first at an exhibit at a local psychiatric hospital where I had once worked. I learned that Rockwell had a…

  • Normal head shape and size

    Ateret Haselkorn Bay Area, California, United States   Photo by Karen Arnold. Source My son is flying a rainbow Kite. The streamers frame The beach like a wedding canopy. He runs. His three-year old legs Don’t know the meaning of “stroll.” I recollect, years ago, the prenatal ultrasound. The border of his skull, The tiniest…

  • The Last Angry Man: A caged eagle

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Still from The Last Angry Man. From the Collection of African American film materials at the Southern Methodist University Library. © 1959, renewed 1987 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. galoot: an awkward or uncouth fellow. – Oxford English Dictionary galoot: someone who thinks the world owes him a…

  • Book review: The Doctors Blackwell

    Elizabeth Coon Eelco Wijdicks Rochester, Minnesota, United States   The Doctors Blackwell. Janice P. Nimura. Edith Lutzker celebrated the centennial anniversary of the struggle of five British heroines in her 1969 groundbreaking book Woman Gain A Place in Medicine. Much less has been written on women physicians in Europe and Asia, but the Italian universities…

  • Culture frames the experience and response to psychotic delusions

    Colleen Donnelly Denver, Colorado, United States   Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash Since the 1950s many people suffering from psychotic delusions have claimed that these were caused by contemporary technology such as electromagnetic and micro- waves or computer chips clandestinely planted during medical procedures or alien abductions. Such tightly held beliefs and anxieties…

  • Atypical appendectomies

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Nathaniel Koo Chicago, Illinois, United States   The Silversides Appendectomy was photographed by XO Roy Davenport, at the patient’s head. Thomas Moore is the dark-haired bearded man in the T-shirt. From the USS Flier Project. Appendectomies are routine procedures—until they are not. Three cases of auto-surgery and three other semi-pro appendectomies are worth…

  • Hispanic, Latin, Latino, Latina, or Latinx?

    Bernardo Ng Imperial County, California, United States   Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month Celebration 2019. Photo by CSUF Photos. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. The first time I became aware of a scientific group using the term Latinx was in 2018 during a meeting in Austin, Texas. It is a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina that…

  • St. Godric and the lost leper hospital of Darlington

    Stephen Martin UK   Fig 1. Godric praying to the Virgin, c 1400. PD-US, accessed: wikimedia, original: ©British Library Board, Cotton, Faustina, VI, ii 16 V. In the late 1100s, the English monk Reginald of Durham wrote an account in Latin of the hermit St. Godric, whom he knew personally.1 Reginald attributed over two hundred…