Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: amnesia

  • Broca’s Brains: A lesson in the importance of saving the history of neuroscience

    Richard Brown Halifax, NS, Canada Thalia Garvock-de Montbrun Montreal, QC, Canada   Figure 1. Brain of patient (Lelong) with aphasia studied by Broca. Photo taken by Richard Brown May 2017. Recent fires at the National Museum of Brazil and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa1,2 have shown the fragility of rare books,…

  • Reconstructing memories and history in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

    Tonse N.K. RajuGaithersburg, Maryland, United States “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” In the opening sentence of his extraordinary masterpiece, Gabriel García Márquez distilled the recurring themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude1: the absurdity…

  • The amnesic jokester

    Jason Brandt Baltimore, Maryland, United States   Black-and-white drawing of a man scratching his head, from The Evening Ledger, Philadelphia, May 4 1916. scanned by Open Clip Art Library user Johnny Automatic. Via Wikimedia Bob T. had suffered a stroke. Not the kind of massive, devastating stroke that left him bereft of language (aphasia), or…

  • The Montreal Experiments: Brainwashing and the ethics of psychiatric experimentation

    Shaan Bhambra Montreal, Canada   The Allan Memorial Institute (pictured here), where the Montreal Experiments were conducted as a part of the CIA’s MKUltra project on brainwashing, continues to serve patients of the Psychiatry Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Photo by chrisinphilly5448 on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. “We do not merely destroy our enemies;…

  • Amnesia remembered

    Karen Langer New York, New York, United States   Amnesia, the medical record noted. He developed amnesia after a mechanical fall on black ice, resulting in a mild traumatic brain injury and a hip fracture. After surgery to repair the hip, there was onset of metabolic encephalopathy, and between the encephalopathy and the brain injury…

  • The treasure trove of memory

    Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece     Olive Tree with Pansies, Loutraki, Greece Memory, the ability to recall at will previous events and various facts, is a precious mental faculty, an asset that underpins learning, knowledge, and experience in any field of human endeavor. In medicine its value is undeniable, though for legal as well as…

  • The doctor and the baron

    George DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States There was a doctor, and there was a baron. The doctor could write, the baron could fly. On a clear day the baron could have flown on the back of an eagle over Italy and Spain to the Carolinas and the White House. There was also a rogue professor. And…