Fall 2014 - Hektoen International

The law of diminishing returns: biomedical research in trouble

January 27, 2017

Hans Peter Dietz Australia It is that season of the year again. The medical faculty of my university bids us to attend another celebratory dinner, an opportunity to hand out awards and congratulate ourselves on how well we are all doing. In recent times such events leave me a bit confused. On the one […]

Looking

January 27, 2017

Caroline Wellbery Washington DC, United States Photography by Kit I have always been an observer, something that comes so naturally to me that when I notice the absence of this skill in others, I am sometimes taken aback. “How could you not see that?” I ask, not always endearingly. To the credit of those […]

Pain and palpation: reading the body narrative with the osteopathic medical touch

January 27, 2017

Aneesa Sataur Miami, Florida, United States “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” (Definition of Pain, The International Association for the Study of Pain, 2010)1 Andrew Taylor Still, 1914 Pain is a complex sensation that incorporates the mental and the physical. […]

Paul Wood on history-taking

January 27, 2017

Paul Wood (1907 – 1962) To take an accurate and relevant history is one of the most difficult and important arts in medicine. Sometimes, a complete diagnosis can be made from the history alone, and not infrequently the possibilities can be whittled down to two or three. A good history should at least indicate […]

Philosophy and Medicine

January 24, 2017

Roger Paden Virginia, United States Philosophy, 1899–1907 Gustav Klimt Destroyed by fire in Schloss Immendorf in 1945. In 1894, Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch received a commission to create a series of paintings that were to be installed on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the New University of Vienna. Eleven years later, […]

When the sensory lens is an artistic prism: the brain, Kandinsky, and multisensory art

January 23, 2017

Gregory W. Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States Wassily Kandinsky seated before one of his paintings In 1812 an Austrian physician named Georg Sachs published a medical dissertation about his family’s albinism.1,2 Conspicuous by inclusion, Sachs claimed to simultaneously hear and see colored music. His claim of a sensory duality is considered the first […]

The body vanished: Sebald’s view of dissection in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

January 22, 2017

Jennifer Xu Gran Rapids, Michigan, United States In the opening chapter of W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, we encounter a large painting of a body being cut open: Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, completed in 1632.1 Every January, Dr. Tulp gave anatomy lessons to the Amsterdam Guild of […]