Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: August 2021

  • A look back at insulin

    Shrestha SarafSutton Coldfield, United KingdomSanjay SarafSudarshan RamachandranBirmingham, United Kingdom As we approach the centenary of the isolation, purification, and clinical use of insulin, it is an appropriate moment to reflect on the impact of this hormone on the management of diabetes. Diabetes can be defined as a heterogeneous group of conditions resulting in high blood…

  • Emptiness

    Sarah Alam New Delhi, India Today I feel just emptinessI am numb more or less,I can’t believe you are gone forever,Will this agony end ever?Your face shines before my eyes,I couldn’t even say goodbye,I never knew those words would be last,Each memory I want to grasp,There are so many questions,Beyond my comprehension,It’s said it is darkest…

  • Queen Juana: The mad or the betrayed?

    Juliana MenegakisLondon, United Kingdom Juana of Castile is known by her epithet “the Mad.” But was she truly insane? Infanta Juana of Castile and Aragon was born in 1479 to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the famed Catholic Monarchs who united Spain. Juana had two older siblings, Isabella and John, and…

  • The assassination of President McKinley: Death from traumatic gunshot pancreatitis?

    On September 6, 1901, the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, was shot twice with a concealed weapon by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, New York. A popular president, he was serving a second term, having led the country to…

  • Sports and the uneven playing field

    Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” — Napoleon (the pig) Animal Farm by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903 – 1950). The motto of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — Citius (Faster), Altius (Higher), Fortius (Stronger) is incomplete without “si ego te permitto” (if…

  • Eugen Bleuler and schizophrenia

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England, United Kingdom Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) (Fig 1) was one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time, best known today for his introduction of the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox. In the second half of the nineteenth century, psychological medicine was in its infancy.…

  • Painting an ICU

    Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, England, United Kingdom “[Monet was] only an eye – yet what an eye.”— Paul Cézanne Much has been written about Claude Monet’s ophthalmic pathology.1-4 However, attributing his stylistic development to cataracts alone seems an overly reductionist view. In 1874, at least fifteen years before his Japanese Bridge and Water Lilies series, his…

  • Aunty Felicia

    Boma SomiariPort Harcourt, Nigeria I can’t stand blood. So my goal was to stay as far as I could from hospitals and all they come with. But then change came to me when Aunty Felicia came to my village with a missionary organization that chose medicine and science as the medium for their message. As…

  • Art or science, doctor or shaman?

    Ihar KazakFlorida, United States  It all started with a scratch on my right ankle during a close encounter with the metal bed leg. It seemed only a surface scratch—a dab of triple antibiotic ointment and a band aid and I would be as good as new. The wound began to heal, and I resumed my…

  • Peter Panum and the “geography of disease”

    Kathryne DycusMadrid, Spain In 1846, the Faroe Islands experienced an outbreak of measles, the likes of which had not been seen in sixty-five years. The Danish government called upon a newly graduated physician, Peter Ludwig Panum, to investigate and control its spread. Panum wrote of the experience in his seminal text, “Observations Made During the…