Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Grover Cleveland

  • Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind

    Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I… Read more

  • Shostakovich and the simian serenade

    Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland One of the fascinations of medical humanities is the two-way traffic between artists and scientists with cutting-edge aspects of science, technology, and medicine. A signal example is the heady ferment of scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union. One of the more exotic… Read more

  • Mercurochrome

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States It’s easy to spot a boy… He smells of licorice, he smells of mice, Of Mercurochrome, and vanilla ice.—Ogden Nash, A Boy is a Boy (1961)1 Visiting the World Heritage Ngorongoro Conservation Area on a safari expedition in Tanzania in 2018, I… Read more

  • The chemistry of coffee and the paradox of balance

    Rao UppuBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States Coffee is more than a daily stimulant; it is a quiet lesson in biological balance. The long-running debate over whether coffee is “good” or “bad” increasingly shows that, for most people, moderate intake—about one to three cups a day—sits… Read more

  • Thoughts in a hospital elevator

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece It is New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, and as I ride the hospital elevator down to the underground car park, oddly but not inexplicably I think about life and death. Ever since I started medical practice, at the… Read more

  • Identity beyond memory: Rethinking early onset Alzheimer’s disease

    Firas Ghanem Beirut, LebanonNancy ChedidCambridge, Massachusetts, United States “On my good days, I can almost pass for a normal person, and on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now… Read more

  • Brain surgery, now and then

    Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland In Michael Crichton’s novel The Terminal Man (1972), Harry Benson undergoes brain surgery at the hands of Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, Los Angeles.1 By implanting electrodes deep in Benson’s brain, McPherson plans to cure him of… Read more

  • The doctors of Thomas Hardy

    In his widely read novels, Thomas Hardy describes life in late nineteenth-century England, when truly effective medical remedies were exceedingly few and doctors were greatly limited in what they could achieve. Conditions were worse in rural areas, where poverty was an additional factor in determining the… Read more

  • In praise of speleology

    As freshmen at the university, we were advised to join a society or club in order to expand our horizons through what later became known as a liberal education. So, my classmate Pete convinced me to join the speleological society and suggested we should explore… Read more

  • Carl Linnaeus as dietitian and pediatrician

    Göran WettrellLund, Sweden Carl Linnaeus as pediatrician Carl Linnaeus is best known as a botanist through his classification of the sexual system of plants and taxonomy. His interest in botany was noticed from a young age at Växjö Gymnasium by his teacher, provincial physician Johan… Read more

  • The rhinoceros, threatened by extinction

    Introduction Five rhino species survive across Africa and Asia. They are distinguished by their massive size, thick protective skin, and horns composed of keratin—the same protein as found in human hair and nails. The rhinos once roamed the savannas in large numbers but in more… Read more

  • Physicians as inventors

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure, and money.”—Albert Szent-Györgyi, 1937 Inventions can be created either following a sudden enlightenment (for which Claude Bernard coined the term être frappé—to… Read more