Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Gallery

  • Parkinson’s

    Glen P. Aylward Springfield, Illinois, United States In Parkinson’s, the colors express the emotional intensity and frustration experienced by those with Parkinson’s Disease, while the inflammation and anatomic components of the disease are also depicted by the shapes. I have experienced these emotions and symptoms since my diagnosis of PD 8 years ago. The painting is…

  • Sanctuary

    Bruce GranquistMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States In 2012 I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I thought this meant that my career as a book illustrator and calligrapher was over. But after making some experiments I realized that the tremor in my right hand allowed me to make much more expressive calligraphic lines than I had made…

  • Effervesce

    Catalina Florina Florescu  Hoboken, New Jersey, United States   Note: Scroll to continue the comic     CATALINA FLORINA FLORESCU holds a Ph.D. in Medical Humanities from Purdue University. She is the curator of the New Plays Festival at JCTC. Her next and last book is under contract with Routledge, Female Playwrights Intersectionality in Contemporary Romanian…

  • A plastic surgeon’s weeks in lockdown

    Neha ChauhanBangalore, Karnataka, India As I tuned in to the announcement on March 24th, 2020 that India would be completely locked down for next three weeks to flatten the curve of coronavirus spread, my heart skipped a beat and then almost sank. I spent a sleepless night trying to understand my reaction of experiencing a…

  • Together, We Are an Ocean

    Janet CaiNew Brunswick, NJ “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”– Ryunosuke Satoro Together, the individual cells, lamellae, and glands featured in these paintings contribute to a complete functioning body. There is a kind of beauty about the individuality and unity simultaneously exhibited; as physicians, nurses, social workers, and other healthcare personnel,…

  • Blood policies and bioart in the 1900s

    Christopher HubbardOhio, United States Policies related to blood that were adopted in the U.S. during the early to mid-1900s produced cultural and legal effects for certain populations. In 1920, for example, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act was passed by Congress,1 which modified how identity classifications and boundaries would be drawn up. The act classified an…

  • of little significance

    Vamsi ReddyKeri JonesAugusta, Georgia, United States VAMSI REDDY is a third-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his undergraduate education at Augusta University in the inaugural class of the BS/MD accelerated medical program. Vamsi enjoys the beauty which pervades through the medical field and has taken to trying to capture a glimpse…

  • Rewiring the brain

    Paul RoopraiHamilton, Ontario, Canada Approach as a medical illustrator The modern-day perception of mindfulness and meditation is inextricably linked to the mind, which is associated physically with the brain. The rendering of the brain at the top of the poster represents the biological processes that mindfulness promotes in the brain. The renditions of the neuron…

  • TB-AIDS diary

    Linda TroellerNew York, New York, United States The TB-AIDS Diary was created in 1987 to address issues of stigma, comparing the response to patients with tuberculosis in the 1930s with the reaction to patients with AIDS in the 1980s. Tuberculosis was used as a metaphor for the stigma surrounding contagious diseases and treated primarily as…

  • Breathing

    Laura Anne WhiteRochester, MN, USA Author’s statement: I wrote this poem on a piece of scrap paper around five am, towards the end of a night shift. About fifteen minutes after coming into work that evening, a patient of mine who had been somnolent struggled to breathe. Moments like this have a way of grounding…