Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: F. Gonzalez-Crussi

  • Love as illness: Symptomatology

    Frank Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Sappho as imagined by Raphael in the fresco known as Parnassus in the Raphael rooms in the Palace of the Vatican (c. 1509–1511). She appears in a corner of the fresco, holding a scroll with her name. Via Wikimedia. Is love a disease? I mean erotic,…

  • The dream of the uterus

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi  Chicago, Illinois, United States   Front page of the book that started the debate on “the thinking uterus” at the University of Bologna: Genial days of the dialectic of women, reduced to its true principle, etc. Naples, 1763. More than one-half century ago, it was my duty to examine and describe, day in…

  • A birth remembered

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. The Birth of Benjamin and the Death of Rachel, by Francesco Furini (1600 or 1603–1646). Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Memory is to old age as presbyopia (far-sightedness) is to eyesight. Presbyopia makes you lose the ability to see clearly at a normal near working distance while…

  • Of luxuriant manes and in praise of baldness

    Frank Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Voltaire rising from bed (Le Lever du Philosophe de Fer***X), by Jean Huber (1721-1786), after a painting by the same artist. Print acquired by the British Museum in 1861. The feverish imagination of poets has ever eulogized the beauty of feminine hair. The beloved’s hair has…

  • We are all hospitalized (metaphorically speaking)

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Right section of an etching titled Infirmus eram et visitastis me: (“I was sick and you visited me,” quoted from Matthew 25:36), sometimes attributed to Cornelius Galle. The left section (not shown) has Jesus Christ overseeing the hospital visit. Among the many species of adversity that unavoidably…

  • Cranium: the symbolic powers of the skull

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, USA   It Was a Man and a Pot. Georgia O’Keeffe. 1942. Crocker Art Museum Of all bodily parts, the head has traditionally enjoyed the greatest prestige. The Platonic Timaeus tells us that secondary gods (themselves created by the Demiurge) copied the round form of the universe to make the head,…

  • Fire eaters

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, USA   “La Trinchera” (The Trench). Mural by the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) in the former San Ildefonso College of Mexico City, now a Museum and cultural center. Author’s collection. I have often wondered what obscure forces impel Mexicans to relish the unbearably acrid hot peppers used as condiment…

  • An “enematic” saga

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, USA   Primitive method of administering an enema, by blowing directly without the use of an injector1 Apothecary holding an enema syringe2 “The Enema”3 Those of us who have managed to survive sixty, seventy, or more years remember that the enema or clyster was, by far, the commonest home remedy in…