Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Adam

  • Mitochondrial DNA: a maternal gift

    Marshall LichtmanRochester, New York, United States DNA is arrayed on twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in human cell nuclei. It is coiled tightly around proteins called histones that together with DNA form a chromosome. The largest chromosome carries several thousand genes and the smallest several hundred. DNA is so tightly wound that uncoiled from a single…

  • Animality revisited in times of the coronavirus: A fable

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Imagine, as painters have done, representatives of animal species congregated in an assembly (Fig. 1). A man comes to address this motley crowd in this way: “You guys [he purposefully adopts this condescending language] have recently wronged us. Let me start by reminding you that you did not discover fire;…

  • Paradise Lost – John Milton

      Before his final expulsion from paradise Adam was taken to the highest mountain in the garden, where the archangel Michael showed him what misery the future will bring to man: Immediately a place Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark; A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies Of…