Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: code

  • Poets at the Craiglockhart War Hospital

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kindom In the First World War, the writer Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) (Figs 1 and 2) received the Military Cross for bringing back wounded soldiers under heavy fire.1 He was admitted to the Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh in 1917,2,3 where he befriended… Read more

  • Diary of a doctor

    Perpetual Enefuwa SalamiBenin City, Nigeria The following is a work of fiction. It was my first day working as a resident physician at Emis Clinic. I recall crying my eyes out the day I finally received a transfer letter. I was elated, accidentally booted my… Read more

  • The sophia and phronesis of modern medicine

    Meaghan O’ConnorDurham, North Carolina, United States My first clinical experience was working as a hospice aide my sophomore year of college. During that experience I watched my first patient suffer—physically and spiritually—and eventually die. Not bound by the time constraints of more formal medical settings,… Read more

  • The anorexia of aging

    Alexandra MignucciAlbany, New York, United States While working at a medical home for patients with Alzheimer’s, I became fascinated by the difference in how much food the patients would eat when sitting at the table as a group versus when I would feed them in… Read more

  • From Sophocles to the frontline

    Alexandra PliakopanouIoannina, Greece In the deserted misty land of Lemnos, a wailing voice echoes, emanating from a wounded warrior abandoned by his comrades nine years ago. Philoctetes, the titular character of Sophocles’ 409 BC play and once a great hero of the Greeks, now lies… Read more

  • Entomological evidence and tales of the dead

    Srilakshmi ChidambaramManila, Philippines Picture the scene: A body, blue with bloat, sprawled across the floor. The skin is sloughed off and peeling; fat drips through the carpet. The room is warm with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. A living, seething mass of flesh-eating maggots swarms… Read more

  • Philip the Handsome and the plague

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Philip of Habsburg was born in Bruges in 1478. He was the son of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, in a marriage that would ultimately extend control of the House of… Read more

  • John Fothergill (1712–1780), eminent physician, reformer, and botanist

    Living at a time when physicians had wide interests in science and in particular in botany, John Fothergill collected many species of plants and was particularly interested in their medicinal properties. In 1762 he purchased thirty acres in the East End of London and built… Read more

  • Thomas Beddoes, MD (1760–1808)

    Born in Shropshire in 1760 into a modest family, Thomas Beddoes was a precocious child, insatiable for books, and disinclined to participate in games. Through the help of a wise grandfather, he was introduced to a local surgeon who used him as a helper at… Read more

  • Preventing the next Mengele

    Matthew TurnerMcChord, Washington, United States The icy November wind cut like a knife through his dress uniform, down to his very bones, but the young doctor did not move a muscle. Like a statue, he stared ahead with the other men in the column at… Read more

  • A cesarean section in Uganda in 1879

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A strange story indeed, almost too good to be true.”1 Until the end of the nineteenth century, a cesarean section to deliver an infant was considered to be an operation with much risk and little success. In England, some physicians “doubted if… Read more

  • Matthew Baillie (1761–1823), anatomist and physician

    Born in Scotland in 1761, Matthew Baillie was taught to read and write at the age of five. He studied Greek and Latin at the local school, at Glasgow University (1774), and at Balliol College in Oxford (1778). In 1780, he began to work in… Read more