Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Books and Reviews

  • Philip Roth’s Nemesis: a lesson for today

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States As we grapple with the impact of the current pandemic caused by the coronavirus, Covid–19, we may wish to seek understanding in works of non-fiction such as The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry or the writings of authors from…

  • Embalming Vladimir Lenin

    In 1997, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ilya Zbarsky wrote a book about embalming the body of Vladimir Lenin, a process in which both he and his father (Boris Zbarsky) took part during the decades of terror of the Bolshevik reign. It all seems to have begun in 1918, when a…

  • Hiroshima seventy-five years after the bombing

    Cristóbal Berry-CabánFort Bragg, North Carolina, United States “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in…

  • The woman doctor as medical and moral authority: Helen Brent MD

    Carol-Ann FarkasBoston, Massachussetts, United States In the late nineteenth century, many women who dared to study and practice medicine tempered that radical move with the reassuring insistence that, by virtue of their sex, they could combine medical knowledge with feminine, maternal guidance for the physical and moral well-being of their patients. The gender essentialism of…

  • George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma

    In the first act of Shaw’s play, several doctors come to congratulate Sir Colenso Ridgeon, recently knighted for discovering that white blood cells will not eat invading microbes unless they are rendered appetizing by being nicely buttered with opsonins. Patients supposedly manufacture these opsonins on and off, and would be cured if inoculated when their…

  • The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part III

    Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States A cure for loneliness In the video “What is Literature For?” produced by The School of Life, author Alain de Botton claims that books are a cure for loneliness. Since we cannot always say what we are really thinking in civilized conversations, literature often describes who we genuinely are more…

  • The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part II

    Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States The placebo effect When first exploring literature’s psychological effects on the reader, it is important to consider whether a book can have healing properties by acting as a placebo. In Persuasion and Healing, Jerome Frank discusses the importance of the connection between patient and healer. In his chapter on the…

  • The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part I

    Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.—Rudyard Kipling Literature is medicine for the soul In the 1980s, the mother of Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary scholar, was in the hospital, ill and delirious. Seeking to ease her suffering, her father gave her the twenty-five books of…

  • Dr. Charles Drew, Philip Roth, and race

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States “My point is, if you have a course on health and whatever, then you do know Dr. Charles Drew. You’ve heard of him?” “No.”“Shame on you, Mr. Zukerman. I’ll tell you in a minute” . . .“You haven’t told me who Dr. Charles Drew was.”“Dr. Charles Drew,” she told…

  • The Craft of Medical Reflection

    JTH ConnorSt. John’s, Newfoundland Allan Peterkin is a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. As a teacher and author he is probably best known for his survival guide to post graduate medical studies, Staying Human During Residency Training: How to Survive and Thrive after Medical School, which is now…