Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: October 2021

  • The patronage and playability of Mozart’s flute works

    Stephen Martin Durham, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Exposition of the D Major flute quartet. Beethoven borrowed the first two bars. Mozart obviously used a thicker-cut quill for hand-writing than for the notes. ‘Figur Handschrift’ is in a later hand. (IMSLP, CCA-SA 4.0) It is therapeutic to have an intellectual interest outside clinical work, a…

  • Richard Wagner, a man of many symptoms

    Richard Wagner, Munich. 1871. by Franz Hanfstaengl. Via Wikimedia. Richard Wagner was an extraordinarily talented musical genius. Almost singlehandedly he revolutionized opera, completing its transformation from the traditional recitative–aria format to a continuous musical drama. He was born in 1813 in turbulent times in Leipzig. There four months after his birth the combined forces of…

  • The “weak” intern

    Htet Khine Reno, Nevada, United States   Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash “She is quite weak,” I overheard two senior residents say about one of my co-interns. I tried to tune out the conversation—I did not have enough time or mental capacity to comprehend what being “weak” entailed. I was busy writing notes, answering…

  • Past, present, and future of psychedelic medicine

    Jennifer Keehn Baja California, Mexico   Photo by Merlin Lightpainting from Pexels While there are now more clinical trials than ever before on the therapeutic applications of psychedelics, the medicinal use of such substances is not new. Indigenous cultures worldwide have used plants, roots, vines, and fungi that produce altered states of consciousness in healing rituals…

  • Psychiatric care at the historical Athens Mental Health Facility

    Cherron Payne Farmington, Connecticut, United States   Athens Asylum for the Insane, Athens State Hospital Administration Building, Circa late 19th Century to early 20th Century. Ohio University Archives. When I was an undergraduate student at Ohio University in Athens, my friends and I would often hike to an intriguing place called the Ridges, overlooking the picturesque…

  • Malaria in defeat and victory

    Richard J. E. Brown Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom   Lab work in progress at the Royal Navy School of Malaria and Hygiene, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1944. IWM Non-Commercial Licence © IWM A 28167. A few weeks ago, in the reading room of the National Archives in London, I came across the war diary of a…

  • A “most perfect interchange”

    Satyabha TripathiLucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India “[Lydgate held] the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good […] he was an emotional creature, with a flesh-and-blood sense of…

  • Poe’s murder mystery as a model of neurodiverse inclusion

    Geoff HoppeVirginia, United States A murder mystery might seem like a strange place to find hope, but hope is what Edgar Allan Poe’s mysteries can provide—if you know how to look. While Poe’s stories depict the macabre, they also demonstrate how a neurodiverse mind can find inclusion in a neurotypical society. Two instances in a…

  • The forerunner

    Shafiqah Samarasam Malaysia   Skyline in Kuala Lumpur with haze. 2004. Photo by Nesnad. Via Wikimedia. CC BY 3.0. Southeast Asia has experienced detrimental, large-scale air pollution for decades. Known as the “Southeast Asia haze,” this transboundary pollution is largely caused by illegal agricultural fires in the forests of Indonesia. The lingering smoke results in breathing…

  • A note on handedness

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Handedness (chirality) refers to the preferential use of one hand over the other. It is a matter of degree; it is seldom absolute. Population left and right preference existed in the Neanderthals (lived from 400,000 to about 40,000 years ago) onwards. Only homo sapiens amongst the great apes…