Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: childhood

  • Normal head shape and size

    Ateret Haselkorn Bay Area, California, United States   Photo by Karen Arnold. Source My son is flying a rainbow Kite. The streamers frame The beach like a wedding canopy. He runs. His three-year old legs Don’t know the meaning of “stroll.” I recollect, years ago, the prenatal ultrasound. The border of his skull, The tiniest…

  • Ludwig van Beethoven: music and medicine

    Michael Yafi Chaden Yafi Houston, Texas, United States   Beethoven home and surrounding area. Photos by Michael Yafi. December 2020 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. The causes of the composer’s deafness and his death at the age of fifty-six have remained unknown, even after an autopsy carried out soon…

  • Children treating children: Anne Shirley as clinician

    Kathryne Dycus Madrid, Spain   First edition cover of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, published 1908. Cover art by George Fort Gibbs (1870—1942). Public Domain. Childhood classics provide a range of illness narratives, reminding readers of dangers now preventable and even treatable, but also of the universal imperatives of understanding and accommodating…

  • Self-esteem and skin diseases

    Bebeyi Abiodun Nigeria   We don’t live forever, so let’s make those around us happy. African Global Pharma (AGP) When I was a little girl, I looked for angular objects to help me scratch my legs. The itch and disgust encroached on my everyday life. I always wore my socks pulled up even though it…

  • Edvard Munch: The child who never grew up

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas The paintings of Edvard Munch are often used as an example of the association between creativity and mental illness. Can we, however, analyze them from the perspective of the feelings of a child? Traumatized by the death of his mother when he was only five years old1 as portrayed in The Dead…

  • Child’s play and art

    Bojana CokícZajecar, Serbia Childhood is an important time of learning and development. Play is the work of childhood, affecting sensorimotor, cognitive, emotional, moral, and social development.1 Children have always played.3 Throughout history, children’s games have changed with the social environment. In past centuries, children’s play began in the evening, on the street, after girls had helped…