Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: dementia

  • Robin Williams: Death from Lewy body dementia

    Mary Ellen KellyDublin, Ireland When the death of Robin Williams was announced on August 12, 2014, the world shed a tear. The passing of the acclaimed and adored actor came as a shock to many, the announcement by the Marin County sheriff’s office having specified that the cause of death was suicide and that Mr.…

  • Identity beyond memory: Rethinking early onset Alzheimer’s disease

    Firas Ghanem Beirut, LebanonNancy ChedidCambridge, Massachusetts, United States “On my good days, I can almost pass for a normal person, and on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of…

  • What would one prefer to say about Bartleby?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Bartleby is the enigmatic personality par excellence.”1 Herman Melville (1819–1891) was a prolific American novelist and poet. He was born in New York City. Both of his grandfathers were officers in the Colonial Army during the American Revolution, one a colonel, the other a general. When his family had financial troubles, he…

  • A portrait of dementia

    Lindsay RipleyDallas, Texas, United States A few months ago, I watched The Father, a film with Olivia Colman in a main role and Anthony Hopkins as the titular father. Hopkins plays Anthony, a character who bears Hopkins’ own name because writer and director Florian Zeller wrote the part imagining Hopkins in it. Like Hopkins, now…

  • Revising my bargain with the deity

    Barry PerlmanNew York, New York, United States My parents lived into their nineties. Before they died, they endured years of dementia. Aware of my potential genetic inheritance, I have long harbored a deep dread of what my future might hold. If my curved pinky fingers were inherited from my mother and my flat feet and…

  • Eugen Bleuler and schizophrenia

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England, United Kingdom Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) (Fig 1) was one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time, best known today for his introduction of the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox. In the second half of the nineteenth century, psychological medicine was in its infancy.…

  • Alzheimer and his disease

    JMS PearceHull, England “Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo (powerfully in deed, gently in manner).”— Franz Nissl’s description of Alzheimer (1916) Curiously, until the 1970s the high prevalence Alzheimer’s disease was not recognized as the most common cause of dementia.1 Most demented patients until then were labeled as having cerebral arteriosclerosis, or as sufferers from…

  • The loneliness of the long-living doctor

    Peter Arnold Sydney, Australia A noticeable phenomenon of the twenty-first century is the increasing frequency of friendships between older men. The importance of such friendships to both mental and physical health has been well documented.1,2,3 This issue has particular relevance to older male doctors, especially in the UK, where doctors tend to retire early.4 Many…

  • Can behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia salvage Semmelweis?

    Faraze A. NiaziJack E. RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Remember me for the mind I had; not the mind a disease created.  Few physicians have made a more significant observation than did Ignaz Semmelweis.1 In 1847 he took over two obstetric divisions at the Vienna General Hospital. In Division 1, where babies were delivered by…

  • Great expectations

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece “Doctor, I want you to treat her as a forty-year old!” What is the appropriate answer to a demand like that from a daughter about the treatment of her eighty-eight-year-old mother? Any suggestion that her mother might not do well even with the best treatment in the world is anathema to her.…