Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Christianity

  • Faith, neuroscience, and “the thorn” in Paul’s side: Abrahamic interpretations of epilepsy

    Christina Perri Stony Brook, New York, United States   Despite the stigma surrounding epilepsy in the Abrahamic faith traditions, some Christian art uses the boy with epilepsy as a visual metaphor for the Passion. As the boy appears to die and rise from a seizure, so too Christ dies and rises to Heaven. The experience…

  • Reconstructing the world’s first hospital: The Basiliad

    Thomas Heyne Boston, United States    St. Basil “A noble thing is philanthropy, and the support of the poor, and the assistance of human weakness…” So rang the emotional words of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen during the funeral oration delivered for his dear friend Basil of Caesarea in 379. Wishing to remind his audience of Basil’s…

  • John Wesley: Amateur physician and health crusader

    Paul Dakin London, United Kingdom   Portrait of John Wesley John Wesley was an 18th century Anglican priest, Fellow of Lincoln College and Oxford don, with an intellect and energy that resulted in over 400 publications and the riding of a quarter of a million miles to preach forty thousand sermons.1 The movement he reluctantly…

  • Is healthcare a right?

    Ronald Pies Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane. —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Introduction In this paper, I examine the question of whether healthcare is regarded as a “basic human right” in the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Though…

  • William Alcott and the cultural meaning of medical knowledge in the nineteenth century

    Catherine Mas Chicago, Illinois, USA   Alcott, The House I Live in, 21 William Alcott (1798-1859) thought of himself as a medical missionary. He devoted most of his life’s work to spreading the nascent knowledge of anatomy and physiology infused with the message of Christian fulfillment. As a reformer and author of over 100 books,…