Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Asia

  • Locked down!

    P. Ravi Shankar Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia   Art by Devika Allath, Year 8, Willoughby Girls High School, Sydney, Australia, 13-year-old niece of the author. The sun was about to rise on another day of lockdown. At the beginning of a new day there is a vague sense of optimism, but that is followed by an…

  • A plastic surgeon’s weeks in lockdown

    Neha Chauhan Bangalore, Karnataka, India   As I tuned in to the announcement on March 24th, 2020 that India would be completely locked down for next three weeks to flatten the curve of coronavirus spread, my heart skipped a beat and then almost sank. I spent a sleepless night trying to understand my reaction of…

  • Plagues and prejudice

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Honolulu Chinatown fire of 1900. Hawaii State Archives.  It was a calm, clear January morning on the gritty streets of paradise. Honolulu, the capital of the newly-annexed U.S. territory of Hawaii, was ushering out a century of upheaval that had included the arrival of explorers,…

  • Science versus religion: the medieval disenchantment

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. An engraving showing a monopod or sclapod, a female Cyclops, conjoined twins, a blemmye, and a cynocephali. By Sebastian Münster 1544. Source History is a novel whose author is the people. -Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)   In medieval times, knowledge, beliefs, and faith were largely centered upon a…

  • Blood beliefs and practices in Iran

    Bahar DowlatshahiTehrann, Iran Blood is believed to have special abilities and properties in many eastern countries such as Iran. Even human personality traits, emotions, and relationships are referred to with blood. Angry people boil their blood; those who are kind and loving are called warm-blooded. In the tradition of some tribes, a stranger can be…

  • Gandhiji on Indianness of health and healthcare (1869–1948)

    Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India   In 2019, 150 years after Mahatma Gandhiji’s birth, India celebrates his birthday to honor his legacy and his contributions to the welfare of this nation. We remember him with his alluring smile, in loin cloth, shawl, and thin-framed glasses, his attire representing his message to lead a simple…

  • Medical doctors in the army of India

    Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India   Fig.1. Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India. “The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.” – Thomas Campbell   India, like many other countries, has doctors serving in the army as well as tertiary care hospitals that provide medical services to the armed forces personnel. It also…

  • Learning to eat at thirty

    Hannah Harpole Bern, Switzerland   “Chai” photo by Hannah Harpole My hippie parents indulged me as a picky eater. At two I proclaimed I was a vegetarian. Around the age of four, I survived solely on yogurt, refusing all other nourishment. I do not exactly know when this morphed into a combination eating disorder of…

  • Of honors lost and honor regained: Indian origin of plastic surgery

    Neha Chauhan Karnataka, India   Figure 1: A singular operation. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) “A skilful dissembler may disguise in a degree, the expression of mouth, the hat may be slouched over the eyes and the chin may be hidden in the impenetrable thicket of beard but the nose will…

  • The curse of the blessing

    Medha Pande Nainital, India   Photo by Pradeep Pande For the wedding of a second cousin, I visited my ancestral village for the first time at the age of twenty-five. The tiny hamlet is in a quaint, expansive valley in the middle Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. The once prosperous region is struggling under the pressure…