Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Careers

  • 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…

  • Blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm: An inseparable balance?

    John Graham-PoleClydesdale, NS, Canada Life blood: Humor and health In 1960, I entered St. Bartholomew’s Medical School on a full classics scholarship. I was a devotee of Hippocrates, with high hopes of embarking on a path of uniting medical science with the healing arts. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” was…

  • The past and future of blood banking

    Eva Kitri Mutch Stoddart Saigon, Vietnam   Image from “Clysmatica nova: sive ratio, qua in venam sectam medicamenta immitti possint, ut eodem modo, ac si per os assumta fuissent, operentur: addita etiam omnibus seculis inaudita sanguinis transfusion,” Artist: Elsholtz, Johann Sigismund (1623–1688), 1667. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Blood oozes allure. The elixir of life, viscous…

  • Bloodlust: The embodiment of the uncanny in “The Vampyre”

    Emily ClineMontréal, QC, Canada Upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein:—to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, “A Vampyre! a Vampyre!” — The Vampyre, John William Polidori With this image Polidori introduces the conventions of the modern vampire story.…

  • Diamond-Blackfan anemia and tap shoes

    Jill Purtee Surprise, Arizona, United States   Tap Shoes. Artwork by Siaron James, 2003, on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Forty years ago I worked in a four-bed pediatric intensive care unit nestled in the pediatric ward. Every few weeks amongst the beeps and alarms, I heard the clicking of tap shoes coming down the pediatric…

  • Control of blood

    E.C. Spary United Kingdom Figure 1. Blood spurting from the neck of a decapitated human sacrifice in this bas-relief on the wall of this Mayan temple at Chichen Itza (Yucatan, Mexico) transforms into snakes, indicating its connection to power, life and death. Blood, that vivid liquid within our bodies, has an attraction for human cultures…

  • The mysterious Red Cross boy

    Emeka Chibuikem V.Enugu State, Nigeria Who is this Red Cross Boy? This is the question to which I could find no answer until this day. I am Alex, from the Igbo tribe in the South-East of Nigeria, and I was born out of wedlock in 1991 to a single mother who died in 1998, while…

  • Of luxuriant manes and in praise of baldness

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States The feverish imagination of poets has ever eulogized the beauty of feminine hair. The beloved’s hair has been represented as golden threads, sunrays, fragrant flowers, or astrakhan fleece (wool famous for its tight, shiny loops). Richard Lovelace spoke of it as “sunlight wound up in ribbands.”1 To Charles Baudelaire, his…

  • Becoming a doctor in Chicago (c. 1954)—The Chicago Maternity Center

    Peter BerczellerEdited by Paul Berczeller An excerpt from Dr. Peter Berczeller’s memoir, The Little White Coat. My group and I were assigned to the Chicago Maternity Center at the end of the obstetrics in November 1955. Despite the recent training at Michael Reese, nothing could have prepared me for the tour of duty at the…

  • Me, my father, and the angels

    Hope Atlas Livingston, New Jersey, United States   I’m Home by Jeniffer Guilherme. November 2019. Published with artist’s permission. The handle of the dresser drawer talks to my father while he sits in bed Whenever he likes he can conjure up the face of the dresser drawer with its pointy ears, droopy mouth and metal…