Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: blindness

  • Tobias and the Angel—Miracle or medical?

    Elizabeth Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Admirers of Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting Tobias and the Angel (circa 1470–1475) may be unaware of the purpose of Tobias’s journey with the archangel Raphael. The Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha posits a story of love and not-so-miraculous healing in seventh century B.C. Nineveh. Tobit, a devout Hebrew, suffers…

  • Albert C. Barnes, MD: the physician who spun silver into gold

    Sylvia KarasuNew York, New York, United States Albert C. Barnes is known as the man who accumulated an incomparable art collection for a foundation that bears his name. Few, though, may know how he earned a place in the history of medicine, specifically through his development of Argyrol, the unique compound that was the source…

  • Did Macbeth have syphilis?

    Eleanor J. Molloy Dublin, Ireland 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 were commonly known to the average person and would be potentially recognizable to the audience in Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare mentions syphilis more times than any…

  • An abominable habit

    Michael CrosslandLondon, United Kingdom 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 smile when I see his name on the clinic list. Jay attends the hospital because he…

  • 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 KlassNew York, New York, United States 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 course so that I could have a…