Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: heart failure

  • Cecil Rhodes: The man with a hole in his heart

    There must be few people in the world who can locate with confidence Northern or Southern Rhodesia on a map of Africa. Yet these countries still exist, only the names have changed. Nor would the man who founded them win a contemporary popularity contest. In fact, his statue at the University of Cape Town was…

  • 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…

  • The heart in Star Trek

    Victor GrechTal-Qroqq Star Trek (ST) is a fictional utopian future history depicting how humanity might develop up to the 24th century. The series and movies comprise a metanarrative that encompasses 735 hours of viewing time, and thereby provides a fertile ground for analysis of various areas of critical study. In several ST episodes, the heart…

  • Sir Thomas Lewis: The promise of electrocardiography

    In republishing an account of clinical electrocardiography, I do so from conviction that this method of examination is essential to the modern study of heart disease. When some twenty-seven years ago I began to study disorders of the heart with the aid of the “string galvanometer” the method was in its early infancy and unknown…

  • Auscultation

    Daly WalkerBoca Grande, Florida, United States In the hospital’s x-ray department, Dad and I entered a small room with a wall of lighted boxes. A man with dyed reddish hair sat, sipping at a mug of coffee and reading a magazine called The American Spectator. “Harry,” Dad said. “Meet my son, Bud. Bud, this is…

  • The First Cut

    Lisa Friedman Cleveland, Ohio, United States   Poet’s statement: The poem is about my first experience with cadavers in the anatomy lab at medical school. The first cut My first patient was an 88-year-old female “Congestive Heart Failure” the chart said. Not in acute distress Neither alert nor oriented x 3. I was told I…