Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Fall 2016

  • Dress makes the doctor

    Mary V. Seeman Ontario, Canada   What doctors wear influences their image.1-3 Vestments act as powerful symbols; they are especially important, it has been argued, when the occupant of the symbolized role is new to it. The less sure a new physician is about his or her professional role, the more critical it is to be…

  • Clinical teaching

    The early part of the student’s clinical career is always the most important. Every doctor knows that the initiation into clinical work is one of the most difficult intellectual and personal trials of the student’s career. The best help that the clinical teacher can give to his students during the early part of their career…

  • The approach to the patient

    Whilst the frontiers of medicine are always advancing the discipline of clinical methods remain unchanged in essentials. Our task as clinicians is to observe accurately and comprehensively, to reason soundly about observations made, to learn the principles and practice of medicine and to appreciate how these can be applied to clinical problems; to approach the…

  • Baker-bates-isms

    For Liverpool graduates of a certain vintage who may still remember the great man; Baker-Bates’ advice on retiring from the hospital. It was to buy a dog six months before retirement and on retirement present the dog to the telephonist. “It will be the only one to recognize you when you visit four weeks later”.…

  • Liverpool before the Beatles

    George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   Liverpool Royal Infirmary In the winter of 1962-1963 I spent a few months working as locum registrar in several hospitals in Liverpool. It was a cosmopolitan city inhabited by people of many origins but predominantly by the descendants of those who had escaped the horrors of the Irish…

  • Health flash: Humanize medicine, the time is now

    Wali ZahidPakistan   Having spent two weeks in Lahore hospitals watching my sister being treated for a fatal disease, I had time to think about some of the fundamental flaws of modern medical practice and education. I concluded that medical education and practice needed to change, and that I was going to start a global movement to…

  • The thickening of blood

    Nod GhoshChristchurch, New Zealand It begins when you are a child, in the pre-antibiotic dawn of an Indian summer, one of six siblings, five of whom will eventually die of broken heart valves or diabetes. But let us say for now, you are a child, a child who loves to dance, to play in the…

  • Anatomical Heart Illustration #1 and #2

    Paul Rooprai Hamilton, Ontario, Canada    Anatomical Heart Illustration #1  Anatomical Heart Illustration #2 Artist Statement Anatomical Heart Illustration #1 and #2 are digital renderings created in Adobe Photoshop CS6. The artworks are personally meaningful to me and were inspired by a woman I met in a volunteer placement while in the Health Sciences program…

  • A poem about plagiarism

    Sergei Jargin Moscow, Russia  (after Edgar Allan Poe) Not Pushkin am I, neither Poe, So great is not my fame. I am a humble Russian poet, S. Jargin is my name.   To plagiarize is worse than steal We love the Copyright, And by quotations we reveal The source from which we write.   Great…

  • Redemption

    Charles H. Halsted Davis, California, USA   Dr. Charles Halsted (right) and his patient who is the subject of the poem (left). Photo courtesy of Charles Halsted. Redemption I’m high on crack and going eighty, black rainy night, oncoming lights, back seat guy shouts out: “Look out!” too late. I cannot breathe, my chest’s come…