Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Doctors Patients and Diseases

  • For debate: Presents from patients

    Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland It was Christmas Day in Guy’s Hospital, London. Two months into my first house-physician post, I was completing a morning round with the staff nurse on my female ward. At the far end of the open ward was a bed with closed curtains. A small face peered round them with increasing frequency…

  • A brief history of ulcerative colitis

    Parnita Kesar South Carolina, United States   Anatomy of the large intestine in ancient Chinese medicine, 1537. Wellcome Collection. The symptoms of ulcerative colitis have been documented since the eighteenth century. From 1745, there is evidence that Prince Charles, the Young Pretender to the English crown, had symptoms consistent with the condition we now know…

  • Empathy or sympathy?

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   David Jeffrey’s splendid paper about emotions and empathy1 points out that Sir William Osler claimed that by excluding emotions, doctors gained a special objective insight into the patient’s suffering. But when Osler advised students that “insensibility is not only an advantage, but a positive necessity in the exercise of a…

  • “You will be alright”

    Swetha Kannan Ajman, United Arab Emirates   Photo by Edwintp on PxHere “Will my daughter be alright?” asked the anxious mother, trying to hold back her tears. A young girl in her early twenties, so petite and frail that her body seemed to be like a sole pearl in a large sea. Her worrisome eyes…

  • Wounded healer

    Brandon Muncan Stony Brook, New York   Jaques-Louis David. Belisarius Begging for Alms. 1781. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Since Plato, the notion of a sufferer helping the suffering has been proposed as one of the more skillful ways of helping a patient through an illness.1 Although this concept has been discussed since the time of…

  • Words

    Riley Scherr Irvine, California, United States   “Words.” Photo by Diana Luque on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Patients in the lobby think I speak Spanish very well. Although I momentarily feel validated, those compliments would mean more if I did not know I was repeating the same conversation cyclically, drawing from a carefully prepared arsenal…

  • The man shackled on 4 Northwest

    Andria Albert Tucson, Arizona, United States   Photo by Nikon Corporation on Unsplash. In one of the patient rooms tucked into the Northwest (NW) wing of the fourth floor of the hospital, there lay a particular man. Upon walking into his room, you would find nothing extraordinary about him. He is young, early thirties, with…

  • White Australia: How white healthcare has affected Indigenous Australians

    Brittany Suann Western Australia   Rural Australia. Photo by author. Australian healthcare is among the best, and Australia boasts the eighth lowest mortality rates in the world.1 For Indigenous Australians, however, health outcomes are 2.3 times worse than for non-Indigenous Australians.1 This gap is stark and is evident in mortality rates, the life expectancy at…

  • Compassion in the emergency room

    Raymond Bellis Stony Brook, New York, United States     Photo by JacksonDavid on Pixabay. Yet another shift in the Emergency Department—between the frenzied rush of staff, the constant pinging of monitors, and the chaotic overhead announcements, I didn’t find the environment particularly conducive to healing. But as a dedicated student in my third year…

  • Once a professor…

    Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece   “Good morning, Professor.” Lake Kremasta, Greece. Photo by author. The elderly man I address by this title lies in bed, visibly weak and rather exhausted, a clean white sheet drawn up to his neck. He has been in the hospital for several days now, and the forced immobility has added…