Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: faith

  • Faith in medicine

    Tyler Beauchamp Augusta, Georgia, United States    Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash. When I was in college, I worked for a nursing unit in the trauma ward. One patient had been in a horrible car accident and barely survived. I visited her for the better part of two weeks before she began to improve.…

  • Spirituality in medicine

    Gautam Sen Kolkata, India   Doctor-patient bonhomie is beneficial for both. Photo by Thirdman on Pexels. Imagine a hospitalized patient in the advanced stages of a difficult disease. He wonders whether he will survive and, if he does, in what state he will spend the remainder of his life. Alone in bed, he sometimes finds…

  • When needs trumped faith and dogma: early twentieth century Los Angeles women’s social conscience

    Saty Satya-Murti Santa Maria, California, United States Michael Engh Los Angeles, California, United States   Fig 1. Los Angeles Population Growth shown in a promotional pamphlet from 1915. From: Abbott, James W. Among cities Los Angeles is the world’s greatest wonder–Why?. [Los Angeles, The Cadmus press, 1915] Source: The Library of Congress. In early twentieth…

  • Faith and patron saints during the Black Death

    Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta   Saint Roch. 1502. Francesco Francia.  Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.  The Black Death of 1348 was the greatest biomedical disaster in European history. Although it was not the first plague epidemic, the Black Death swept through Europe, killing millions indiscriminately and affecting society like no other natural calamity.1 Attempts to understand the…

  • Science versus religion: the medieval disenchantment

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. An engraving showing a monopod or sclapod, a female Cyclops, conjoined twins, a blemmye, and a cynocephali. By Sebastian Münster 1544. Source History is a novel whose author is the people. -Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)   In medieval times, knowledge, beliefs, and faith were largely centered upon a…

  • The sanctity of blood: Jehovah’s Witnesses and bloodless medicine

    Margo A. PeytonBaltimore, Maryland, United States Tammy said that her throat looked like that of a bullfrog croaking on an August night. At her local emergency room, her blood pressure was 240/40 mmHg due to profound aortic valve insufficiency complicated by an aortic aneurysm. Her condition necessitated high-risk cardiac surgery, a procedure that carries the…

  • A happy individual knows nothing

    Basil Brooke Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa   Socrates and his students. Seljuk manuscript, early 13th century. Mubashshir ibn Fātik. Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul It seems that most people, most of the time, tend to avoid the really big questions, the hows and whys of existence, preferring to wait and see what happens when they die.…