Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Fall 2014

  • Death by voodoo: truth or tale?

    Judith N. WagnerMunich, Germany “Their medicine men have tremendous power over them: if they doom one of them to die, the unfortunate will accept his fate, isolate himself from his family and pass away within a short time.” I vividly remember the octogenarian, fragile but lively lady occupying the seat beside me on a flight…

  • The law of diminishing returns: biomedical research in trouble

    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

    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

    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

    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 the system involved, or it should point…

  • Philosophy and Medicine

    Roger PadenVirginia, United States 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, in the midst of an increasingly bitter scandal, Klimt was forced to take back…

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

    Gregory W. RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States 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 explicit mention of what would be later identified as synesthesia (from…

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

    Jennifer XuGrand Rapids, Michigan, United States Every January, Dr. Tulp gave anatomy lessons to the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons at the Waaggebouw amphitheater that “were not only of the greatest interest to a student of medicine” but also of considerable fascination to a larger audience “that saw itself as emerging from the darkness into the…