Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: doctors patients and disease

  • Ernest A. Codman and the idea of medical accountability

    Curtis MargoTampa, Florida, United States There are few treatises in the annals of history that have noticeably altered the course of medicine. The first and most conspicuous would be The Corpus, a collection of more than fifty essays attributed to Hippocrates of Cos.1 Among its many gifts to the healing arts was the notion that…

  • Young, pretty, and not quite right

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Unless we are in pediatrics, we start in clinical practice with our patients tending to be in the age range of our parents, or even older. Increasingly, as the grey in our temples is promoted to silver, their mean age gets closer to ours, and the percentage of younger patients keeps rising.…

  • Beyond medicine

    Jessica TangChicago, Illinois, United States I remember staring intently at the doctor as he presented two options: surgery or do nothing. Surgery could not promise drastic improvement and even came with the risk of paralysis or death. Doing nothing meant an ominous future of moving onward until something traumatic occurred. Neither choice sounded desirable. Was…

  • Reflections on the practice of treatment for drug dependence

    Carla TreloarAustralia The funeral was on a stifling January day in Sydney. The formal, stiff clothes I had put on that morning were damp and limp within minutes outside the air-conditioned car. I greeted the few people I knew who were milling outside the chapel awaiting the arrival of the family and the undertaker’s car.…