Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Camus

  • Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor, (and Bob Dylan)

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Elk Viewing Sleigh Ride – Thunder Bay Resort, Hillman MI. Photo by Joe Ross. Via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0 “Certainly doctors are stupid, or rather, they’re not more stupid than other people but their pretensions are ridiculous; [but] you have to reckon with the fact that they become more and…

  • Remembering Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, physician philosopher

    Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States   “Get Wisdom.” – Proverbs 4:5   Photograph of the author (right) and Dr. Pellegrino (left). Courtesy of the author. One day in the spring of 1985, I remember jogging past the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, wondering what went on in there. It was a gorgeous…

  • Camus, Meursault, and the Biopsychosocial Model

    Liam Butchart Stony Brook, New York   Sunset on the Sea. John Frederick Kensett. 1872. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since the development of medical literature studies in the 1970s, the field has grown and expanded in many fascinating ways.1 For example, courses in medical schools now encourage students to examine their own biases and…

  • Starvation as metaphor

    Michael Shulman  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   “Boy and Girl at Cahera” (1847) Image of the Great Famine for middle-class readers of London Illustrated News.  The mystery of Food Increased till I abjured it And dine without Like God — Emily Dickinson Susan Sontag’s 1978 essay Illness as Metaphor,1 published in serial form in The…