Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Careers

  • Is Mary Seacole the new mother of nursing?

    Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta   Sketch of Mary Seacole by Crimean war artist William Simpson (1823–1899), c. 1855. Source. The promotion of Jamaican businesswoman and “doctress” Mary Seacole as the pioneer nurse in place of Florence Nightingale was given considerable credence early in 2013, when Seacole was named a “pioneer of health care” by the UK Department…

  • Political obfuscation and medical speculation

    Charles G. Kels San Antonio, Texas, United States   Grover Cleveland, 22nd (1885–1889) and 24th President (1893–1897) of the United States, with trademark mustache intact. He is the only US president to serve non-consecutive terms. National Archives, Washington, D.C., USA. Public domain. Politicians have long endeavored to keep their health concerns secret. In US presidential…

  • In the heart of Damascus

    Kera PanniSeaside, California, United States Even as a child in the American suburbs, I knew my blood flowed from Syria. Relatives said my Jiddoo’s parents were farmers near Homs, and my Sittoo’s family was from the town of Mashta al-Helu in the coastal An-Nusayriyah Mountains. Still, I had only been able to create a fuzzy…

  • Ambroise Pare: Standard bearer for barber-surgery reform

    Mildred Wilson Detroit, MI Ambroise Pare, Posthumous, Fantasy Portrait by William Holl. Public Domain “There are five duties of surgery: to remove what is superfluous, to restore what has been dislocated, to separate what has grown together, to reunite what has been divided, and to redress the defects of nature.” -Ambroise Pare1 For centuries, barbers…

  • The gift of life—From whom?

    George M. PantalosLouisville, Kentucky, United States I always thought that donating blood was a good thing to do, but did not get around to it until an intense winter storm left several inches of snow and ice in central Ohio where I was in graduate school in January of 1978. Slick roads resulted in auto…

  • The history of the Red Cross / Red Crescent in blood

    GAP SecretariatPerth, WA, Australia It has been almost one hundred years since the first Red Cross / Red Crescent (RC/RC) blood transfusion service was established by the British Red Cross in 1921. Today, more than 80% of all Red Cross / Crescent National Societies are operating a blood program as a core health and care…

  • Blood type and personality

    Nonoko KamaiNagoya, Japan Why do Japanese people believe in a relationship between blood type and personality? Beginning in the 1970s, the blood type personality hypothesis became fashionable in Japan and it is still popular today.5 A women’s magazine focusing on the topic once sold seven billion copies and there are still fortune telling books based…

  • Bloody segregation: The story of how Charles Richard Drew found life abundantly

    Amy DeMattGreensburg, Pennsylvania, United States “Desperation, weakness, vulnerability – these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.”— Zadie Smith What if, instead of simply practicing empathy, you could literally become a part of someone else? What if you could join a part of…

  • 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…

  • Experimental evidence for the humoral circulatory system

    Mark A. Gray Kansas City, Kansas Humoralism, otherwise known as Hellenistic or Galenic medicine, posited the existence of four humors that were required to be kept in balance to maintain health. Blood was special among these humors, believed to deliver both physical and spiritual nourishment to the body.1 To a modern scientist, the physiology ancient Greek…