Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: hands

  • A lesson in physiology

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece The contours are quite familiar, both to the eye and the touch. My hand strokes its counterpart, its twin sibling: they have been working together ever since I first saw the light of the day in this world. They have washed, clasped, clapped each other, tugged and pulled and strained together. They…

  • 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…

  • Hands

    Laura WhiteRochester, Minnesota, United States I have long been ambivalent toward my prematurely wrinkled hands. This is a combination of my mother’s distaste for her own mitts – I am so sorry you got my hands – and the various comments of others referencing “old lady hands” and similar sentiments. My self-hand-concept has been historically unglamorous. I have…

  • Red right hand: Ectrodactyly as a metaphor

    Erin CrouchKatelyn McDonaldTacoma, Washington Hands make us human. We lend a hand, we put all hands on deck, we know things like the back of our hands. Hands show emotion, beauty, and grace. But as Tolstoy wrote, “What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.”1 Perfect hands do not make a…

  • Surgeon’s hands in Vesalius’s portraits and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp

    Adéla Janíčková Prague, Czech Republic Fig 1: Anon, Frontispiece, 1543. From Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, 1543 “To extol the human hand as a monument to God’s wisdom, an instrument that permits humans to create civilization” This statement by Dolores Mitchell1 describes the human hand as both a monument to divinity and an…