Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Chicago

  • Nurse Helen Repa takes charge in a disaster

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It would not be possible to praise nurses too highly.”– Stephen Ambrose, American historian On July 24, 1915, the Western Electric Company, a technology and engineering giant, had arranged an excursion and picnic for several thousand of its employees. Five Great Lakes excursion boats had been chartered to take them to a…

  • Soul power

    Shannon Adams-Hartung Chicago, Illinois, United States Soul food has deep historical, cultural, and economic roots in the African American community. Much of the cuisine affiliated with modern-day soul food dates back to the era of American slavery. Before the fourteenth century, the African diet was primarily vegetarian. Meat was used sparingly in comparison to various…

  • A celebrated occasion

    Eli EhrenpreisChicago, Illinois, United States She arrives at the office early, looking as if she stepped from a portrait. Her blue eyes glimmer with tears. “My gynecologist has been treating me for hemorrhoids, but the bleeding has been getting worse. It started when I had my boys.” This is not usually a serious problem at…

  • “My dear neoplasm:” Sigmund Freud’s oral cancer

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United states When the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, died in London early on the morning of September 23, 1939, he succumbed to what he wryly referred to as “my dear old cancer with which I have been sharing my existence for sixteen years.” Freud had been discovered to have carcinoma…

  • Entomophagy: History, global food shortage, and climate change

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States On a recent wildlife adventure to the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, our group of adventurers was treated to an afternoon walk with a group of local Khoisan villagers. They were eager to show us how they were able to live off the land. Highlights of that visit included hearing…

  • Reading Lacan 1 – Reading Lacan 2 – Identification with the Aggressor

    Sean MurphyChicago, Illinois, United States Created after reading the work of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Reading Lacan 1 (top) and Reading Lacan 2 (bottom left) capture the abstract nature of his baroque speaking and writing styles. At the same time, they maintain through a bright color palette one goal of psychoanalysis: cure—and with it, hope.…

  • Villanelle

    Jolene WonChicago, Illinois, United States I did not know today would be your last –we see no end for those that we hold dear.If I had known I’d not have let it pass. The nurse who knows she can’t set down her taskscontinues on, tries not to shed a tear.I did not know today would…

  • Metastatic sarcoma

    Tulsi PatelChicago, Illinois, United States His big regret was never building his son a trampoline,now locked away in the shed like some treasure chest he can’t open.Eyes welling up, he says to me proudly, resignedly“16 tumors”before he coughs up a river of rotten red roses. On his chest I press my stethoscope down, softlyhe worries…

  • “For their own sakes”: The Edinburgh Seven, Surgeon’s Hall Riot, and the fate of English medical women

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States “There seems to be practically no doubt now that women are and will be doctors. The only question really remaining is, how thoroughly they are to be educated . . .”—Sophia Jex-Blake, Medical Women: Two Essays1 In 1860s Great Britain, few women could practice medicine. The first was Elizabeth Blackwell.…

  • Alexis Carrel: The sunshine and the shadow

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs, and later developed techniques that were predecessors…