Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: clubfoot

  • On becoming a disabled physician

    Mel Ebeling Birmingham, Alabama, United States   Hephaestus at the Forge. Sculpture by Guillaume Coustou the Younger, 1742. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Jastrow) on Wikimedia. Public domain. The same prominent scar blemishes each foot: beginning two inches below my big toe, it slithers along the medial aspect of my foot, making…

  • Two tales of talipes equinovarus

    Christopher Walker Bielsko-Biala, Poland   Operations for club-foot. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Congenital talipes equinovarus, better known as clubfoot, is a poorly understood but surprisingly common medical condition. According to Ansar et al, it affects about one in one thousand newborns, though this figure varies by country.1 There is a roughly fifty-fifty split between those…

  • Madame Bovary: The clubfoot operation

    Charles Bovary is a country medical practitioner, mediocre, a simple man, not the brightest, but not unambitious. He reads that a simple tendon cutting operation could cure the village stable boy’s club foot, perhaps also bringing recognition to himself and celebrity to the village. At night he studies, trying to work things out. Is it…