Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: heart

  • Sunao Tawara

    Sunao Tawara was a prominent Japanese pathologist and anatomist best known for discovering in 1906 the atrioventricular node, also known as the AV node or bundle of Tawara. This small mass of specialized cardiac muscle fibers located between the atria and ventricles of the heart is a key component of the heart’s conduction system, responsible…

  • Not just for the sake of ourselves

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The Fatal Wounding of Sir Philip Sidney is a painting that I have used often to teach close looking to medical and theological students. The painting is full of details: color, lines, and textures. Faces and body language serve as vessels for emotion and are abundant and finely detailed. It…

  • Hemiplegic migraine, the monster

    Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico The authors of great literary works allow their readers to enter into the very precincts of their imaginations, leading them to the most fantastical places they could have ever imagined. Sadly, however, the authors who create these magical works are just as prone to suffer from the same terrible…

  • Patients without borders: Cardiac surgery, activism, and advocacy

    Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, Netherlands In the 1970s, a “patients without borders” organization made it possible for people with severe heart disease to be flown to other countries for treatment that was unavailable in their home country. It was a decade after Christiaan Barnard had pioneered heart transplantation in South Africa, and although most patients did not…

  • Dr. Désiré-Magloire Bourneville: a man ahead of his time

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.”– Rudolf Virchow, M.D. Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, M.D. (1840–1909), was born into a family of modest means. He earned his medical degree in 1865 in Paris. He is known today, if he is remembered at all, as the…

  • On the way to school

    Mary JumbelicSyracuse, New York, United States A thin line of blood oozed from a shallow cut in the skin, like the first stroke of an artist’s brush on a blank canvas. The second and third incisions intersected the first to form a large Y-shape. Sanguinous fluid beaded up along their lengths. As the scalpel penetrated…

  • An essential attitude of the heart

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States I project an image of the painting, Andy Warhol, on the screen in the medical school classroom. I am quiet for a minute. I then invite students to look at the painting and compose a list of what they see. Twelve students are present. Five minutes later, I notice four…

  • Heart failure

    Charles Halsted Davis California, United States By the time I completed my third medical school year, I had learned the basics of physiology and biochemistry, but had never been face-to-face with a person who depended upon my skills to survive. I had never heard a racing heart nor the sounds of gurgling lungs. I was assigned…

  • Notes on a first abortion

    Henry Bair Stanford, California, United States The first time I saw a late-term abortion by dilation and evacuation, I was surprised that it was a fairly minor procedure. I was to observe the termination at twenty-three weeks of gestation as part of my obstetrics-gynecology rotation, and while the procedure can be performed in a clinic rather…

  • Ode to my stethoscope

    Hilton KoppeLennox Head, Australia Poet’s note My Littman stethoscope has accompanied me on my journey in medicine across five decades into premature medical retirement. It was definitely more difficult to lay down my stethoscope than it had been for me to recommend medical retirement to many of my patients. This poem includes a liberal sprinkling…