Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Alzheimer’s

  • The anorexia of aging

    Alexandra MignucciAlbany, New York, United States While working at a medical home for patients with Alzheimer’s, I became fascinated by the difference in how much food the patients would eat when sitting at the table as a group versus when I would feed them in their rooms or on the couch. There was no difference…

  • Up north

    Richard Bentley Amherst, Massachusetts, United States   Lake Michigan. Photo by Qfamily on Flickr. July 15, 2006. CC BY 2.0. He had come to Northern Michigan, and the lake gulls were shrieking at him. He had been on vacation only two days, but he sat around the cabin, springing up now and then to go…

  • Forever young: The history and promise of young blood therapeutics

    Kelly ChenBirmingham, Alabama, United States Two mice waddle in unison. They eat together, drink together, and nest together. Their closeness is no act of nature—for on closer inspection a delicate line of sutures is seen connecting them from forelimb to hindlimb. They are linked by parabiosis, the surgical joining of two organisms. Parabiosis was first…

  • The professor and the playwright on what it means to care

    Fergus Shanahan Wilton, Cork, Ireland   ALLELUJAH! by Alan Bennett. Credit: Manuel Harlan / ArenaPAL (with permission). Sue Wallace as Hazel; Simon Williams as Ambrose; Rosie Ede as Mrs Earnshaw; Cleo Sylvester as Cora; Julia Foster as Mary; Louis Mahoney as Neville; Patricia England as Mavis; Colin Haigh as Arthur; Gwen Taylor as Lucille; Nicola…

  • Age needs a graying goddess of prophecy and her name shall be Senexa

    Margaret Morganroth Gullette Waltham, MA, USA   The Libyan Sibyl, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel Age needs a tutelary deity, a woke goddess for the Age of Alzheimer’s and the Age of Longevity. We all deserve a powerful, honored, and glorious crone, representing our values and our value. Here, transparently, before your open eyes, I venture to create…