Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Gowers

  • Public health awareness of cataract

    Hosam Halim Amal Halim Menna Elbendary Walaa Asaad Salah Eldean Elsherbini Dalia SabryEgypt During our humanitarian medical outreach campaigns in poor and remote areas, we observed a high prevalence of visual impairment among many patients who presented with advanced medical, surgical, and oncological diseases. Their… Read more

  • Herman Boerhaave

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Herman Boerhaave was born on December 13, 1668, in Voorhout, a small village north of Leiden, Holland, an area known for its tulip-growing. He initially studied divinity, intending to be a priest, then continued his philosophy studies in Leiden on… Read more

  • The guinea pig’s gift: Serendipity and the starvation of leukemia

    Prasad IyerSingapore Medical breakthroughs often arrive not with a fanfare of logic, but with the quiet, baffling persistence of a laboratory anomaly that refuses to be ignored. In 1953, the laboratories of Cornell University Medical College operated in a world away from the high-stakes precision… Read more

  • The treatment of achalasia: A historical analysis

    Piyush PillarisettiPennsylvania, United States Achalasia is an esophageal motility disorder characterized by impaired lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxation and absent or spastic esophageal peristalsis. Typically, the condition leads to solid and liquid dysphagia at symptom onset. After the pathophysiology of achalasia was described in the… Read more

  • Byzantine medical education

    Brady LonerganFarmington, Connecticut Institutional medical education in the Eastern Roman Empire bore considerable resemblance  to modern medical education in terms of structure and accessibility. During the early Byzantine period, medical instruction could be attained in one of two ways: either through an apprenticeship system, often… Read more

  • Artists’ use of color to represent states of mind: Brice Marden and the Virgin Mary

    Paul WilliamsBeaconsfield, United Kingdom Associations between color and states of mind are a familiar aspect of everyday experience. Depression is referred to as “the blues,” someone may be “green with envy,” and “seeing red” is widely associated with aggression and anger; these anecdotal associations are… Read more

  • Saint John Climacus and The Ladder of Divine Ascent

    George ChristopherMichigan, United States Saint John Climacus (St. John of the Ladder) was the abbot of Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai during the early seventh century. He was a student of St. Gregory Nazarian, joined a monastic community at age sixteen, and was known… Read more

  • The legend of Prester John

    In 1187, the army of Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, recaptured Jerusalem for the Muslim world by defeating the Christian Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin in Galilee. Under the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, the Crusaders briefly retook Jerusalem in the Sixth… Read more

  • Charles V and gout

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Charles V, Holy Roman-Germanic Emperor, was born in Gent (Belgium) on February 24, 1500. Son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna I of Castille, he was the grandson of Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg and the Catholic Monarchs. In 1517, he moved… Read more

  • Rapid eye movement (REM) parasomnia: A historical review

    Jiero VirayAberdeen, Scotland Sleep is a physiological necessity for human life. Humans cycle through two phases of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM).1 Each stage is associated with varying degrees of muscle tone, brain wave activity, and eye movements.… Read more

  • Viking medicine and health

    The Vikings raided Europe for more than 300 years, beginning with their attack on the Northumbrian monastery at Lindisfarne in 793 which caused horror across the continent. They came from Scandinavia, where local communities had lived by farming, fishing, and local trade, but where scarce… Read more

  • The Steve Blass syndrome: A case of the yips

    Kevin LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States He was at the pinnacle of his profession: a baseball champion and hero who had pitched two complete game victories in the 1971 World Series, giving up only seven hits and two runs in eighteen innings while winning the deciding… Read more