Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: amnesia

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

    Richard BrownHalifax, NS, CanadaThalia Garvock-de MontbrunMontreal, QC, Canada 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, scientific records, photographs, and films. Descriptions of book burning by Richard Ovendon3 also highlight how easily historical records can be destroyed by…

  • 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 BrandtBaltimore, Maryland, United States Bob T. had suffered a stroke. Not the kind of massive, devastating stroke that left him bereft of language (aphasia), or that rendered him paralyzed on one side of his body (hemiplegia). No, this was a very small stroke deep within his brain; in the medial-dorsal thalamus of the left…

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

    Shaan BhambraMontreal, Canada “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”1– George Orwell, 1984 In the aftermath of World War II, the race to become the dominant world power motivated both the United States and the USSR to strive for influence, power, and military strength. In the mid-twentieth century, the brewing Cold War…

  • Amnesia remembered

    Karen LangerNew 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 he developed…

  • The treasure trove of memory

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, 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 practical purposes, it must be supplemented with written records:…

  • 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…