Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: blindness

  • Did Macbeth have syphilis?

    Eleanor J. Molloy Dublin, Ireland   Gerard De Lairesse suffered from congenital syphilis. Image: Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse. Rembrandt van Rijn. 1665–67. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain. Introduction Syphilis was endemic in Elizabethan England and it was estimated that nearly 20% of the population of London were infected.1 The signs and symptoms…

  • An abominable habit

    Michael Crossland London, United Kingdom   Onania, by John Marten. 1730. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (accessed April 4, 2019). Link Jay is a large man in his twenties with a plume of unruly red hair, giving him the air of an oversized rooster. He is a great storyteller with a contagious laugh, and I always…

  • Edgar Degas’ light sensitivity and its effects on his art

    Zeynel KarciogluVirginia, United States The celebrated nineteenth century French painter Hilaire-Germain Edgar Degas was born in Paris in 1834 to a Creole mother from New Orleans and an Italian father from Naples. In 1855 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, but the following year he went to Italy before finishing his studies. He…

  • Medical deafness or the madness of war: Goya’s motivation for creating the Black Paintings

    Sarah BahrIndianapolis, Indiana, United States The Spanish painter Francisco Goya darkened the plaster walls of his rural Madrid farmhouse with leering witches, a gaggle of grimacing hags, and a man with bulging eyes devouring a human form. The latter painting, posthumously titled Saturn Devouring His Children, features a Titan plunging a bloody child whole into…

  • Waiting for the darkness to lift

    Sheila Klass New York, New York, United States   Amsler chart with macular degeneration From early childhood I wanted to be a writer and tell stories. But Mama and Papa, impoverished and struggling to survive at the end of the Great Depression, scoffed at such ideas and insisted I should be enrolled in a commercial…