Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: September 2021

  • Obstetrical fistula: A malady hidden by shame

    Layla Al-JailaniYemen Nouria strolls across the kitchen, making lunch for her family as she does every day. Her stride is slightly wobbly, but any observer would think this was a healthy young woman. What they do not see, however, is the hidden anguish, pain, and shame that tears at her body and eats through her…

  • A very Victorian drug

    Anita CookeNew Brunswick, Canada On February 14, 1862, the Daily News reported the “Death of a Lady from an Overdose of Laudanum.”1 Four nights earlier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had discovered his wife, Lizzie, in a coma with an empty bottle of laudanum by her side. Despite efforts from doctors, she died a few hours later.…

  • The navel of the world: Belly buttons, innies and outies

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States In 1999, I traveled from Panama to Easter Island, via the Galapagos, as a passenger/deckhand/ship’s surgeon on an old square-rigged sailing ship. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s history and description of the island had captured my imagination. Easter Island, the most remote, isolated place on earth, was originally settled…

  • Erik Jorpes: from Kökar to Helsingfors, Moscow, and Stockholm

    Frank A. WollheimLund, Sweden Johan Erik Johansson was born in 1894 in Jorpesgården in the village of Overbroad on the small, barren island of Kökar in the archipelago of Åland, a Swedish-speaking part of Finland. His father, Johan Eriksson, was a fisherman and his mother struggled on the lean, arable farm. When Erik was six…

  • The remarkable Harriet Lane

    Colin K. L. PhoonNew York, New York, United States The name “Harriet Lane” is well-known to many pediatricians, but perhaps fewer recognize this woman’s other roles in US history (Hint: She was not a pediatrician!). In fact, the US presidency, the military, and pediatric medicine are all linked to the name “Harriet Lane.” Who was…

  • The Portrait of Doctor Gachet

    Nicholas KangAuckland, New Zealand On a spring evening in New York, a portrait is unveiled before a crowded auction room. It pictures an older man wearing a dark blue coat with luminous green buttons. His elbow rests on a red table beside two yellow books. In front of him is a glass with faded purple…

  • Origin of the mind

    Bhargavi BhattacharyyaKolkata, India How are the mind and brain related? The brain is a ball of nerve cells, or neurons. The mind, the functional unit of the brain, includes imagination, perception, thinking, intelligence, judgment, language, memory, and emotions. How do these basic units, neurons, translate to mental faculty? Scientists wanted to look at the function…

  • On beauty and medical ethics

    John Eberly Jr.Anderson, South Carolina, United StatesLydia DugdaleNew York, United States Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing, partaking, creating. Beautiful things invite participation; we find ourselves lingering and listening long. We leave inspired and moved to respond. As artists and poets have…

  • Head and hand: Claude Bernard’s experimental medicine

    James A. MarcumWaco, Texas, United States Claude Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale, originally published in 1865, occupies a critical position in the development of experimental medicine and science.1 In the introduction to the book, Bernard claims that “each kind of science presents different phenomena and complexities and difficulties of investigations peculiarly its…

  • Women surgeons

    Moustapha AbousamraVentura, California, United States Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire fences at first glance appear ominous with their threatening thorns,…