Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: death

  • Washing our hands

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ever since Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, washed his hands before condemning Jesus Christ to death by crucifixion, this simple act of personal sanitation has been used as the figurative icon of a disclaimer, the denial of responsibility. Today, in the climate of the current COVID-19 pandemic, handwashing is not…

  • Engage the emotions

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Captivated by the paintings of Caravaggio, I search for them wherever I travel. But no encounter has been as intense and personal as The Taking of Christ in the Beit wing of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. The Taking of Christ depicts the moment of Jesus’s betrayal by…

  • Aniza

    Eleonore Blaurock-BuschGermany I miss my people and my home,but don’t send me back. I don’t have a passport,no papers. Dad gave them to my husband-to-be,the one who couldn’t take me now,and I am not sad about it. I am crying about my sister.They cut her up, sewed her tightand her fat, old husband, he likes…

  • Theme

    EPIDEMICS Published in March, 2020 H E K T O R A M A   . The recent coronavirus outbreak inevitably brings to mind the Spanish flu, the deadly influenza pandemic of a century ago. Here we republish seven articles about this devastating viral disease that spread to the four corners of the world, killing…

  • Blood is NOT the essence of life?

    Mair ZamirLondon, Ontario, Canada We think of blood somewhat reverently as the essence of life. Yet we miss the point. The essence of life is not blood, it is blood flow. When the heart stops beating the body dies, not because of lack of blood but because of lack of blood flow. In most cases…

  • Avant garde research on a blood substitute at the Hektoen Institute of Medical Research

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Darien, Illinois, United States   From Left to Right: Gerald S Moss MD, Richard Brinkman MD, Lakshman Sehgal PhD, Robert Forest DVM. June 1975, photograph of the team with the first baboon resuscitated with stroma free hemoglobin after being bled down to a hemoglobin concentration of zero. Photo taken by the author. The…

  • Embalming

    The practice of embalming the dead goes back at least to the ancient Egyptians, who wanted to ensure that they arrived in the afterworld in a presentable state as well as having their sarcophagi and pyramids provided with all the necessities required for that long journey. The page shown here is from The Champion Text…

  • Sleep

    Sophia WilsonNew Zealand The fabric of sleepdescends like a tired paw,turns off our lights,offers mouth-to-mouth oblivion. For a while we can pretend we’re like stars andthat we don’t reside here anymore,between impossible grindstonesand the birth-death quandary; We drift weightless as falling leaves,over silver-scaled lakes;sprout fins and tresses andtransform to moon-mirrors until consciousnessdrops its arsenal, hauls us…

  • Some subjects are given

    Michael SalcmanBaltimore, Maryland, United States Some subjects are given to the authorsof poems and songs, of mechanical puzzlesand lives, given over and over like a spiking fever in an old TB wardor the low level irritation of a cancerraising its hand in a bone — here I am it says, conversant with any private language…

  • A quiet night

    Henry BairPalo Alto, California, United States It was the end of the week, the middle of the night, and the beginning of my ER shift. All was quiet, and I was studying at the nurses’ station, still riding the high of having just aced a cardiology exam that was widely regarded as one of the…