Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hektoen

  • Camus, Meursault, and the Biopsychosocial model

    Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York Since the development of medical literature studies in the 1970s, the field has grown and expanded in many fascinating ways.1 For example, courses in medical schools now encourage students to examine their own biases and emotional responses, and medical literature scholars emphasize the educational and clinical value of learning to…

  • Scurvy before James Lind

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Cures of disease are still relatively uncommon. Scurvy is an example of a disease well recognized but whose cause eluded doctors for centuries until an empirical curative remedy and later a specific cause were discovered. In more recent times Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in phthisis or consumption in 1882,…

  • Spinoza and medical practice: Can the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza enrich the thinking of doctors?

    Norelle LickissHobart, Tasmania, Australia As doctors we seek to assuage the distress of our patients by relieving symptoms, guarding personal dignity, and remaining present even as they are dying. Yet despite these lofty goals, there remain facts suggesting profound disquiet among physicians, albeit well disguised: high rates of substance abuse, burnout, suicide . . .…

  • Oliver Sacks and caring for the whole person

    Margaret MarcumBoca Raton, Florida The neurologist Oliver Sacks—“The Poet Laureate of Medicine” according to The New York Times—developed an effective clinical method of treating the patient as a complete person rather than as a defective body part. He wrote that clinicians “are concerned not simply with a handful of ‘symptoms,’ but with a person, and…

  • Did Salvador Dali follow the prolactin discovery in his painting of the fountain of milk?

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States The Fountain of Milk Spreading Itself Uselessly on Three Shoes by Salvador Dali remains one of his most enigmatic works. It shows a nude woman on a pedestal, milk flowing from her breasts, while an emaciated man is staring at her.1 As he was completing the painting, Dali may have…

  • The woman doctor as medical and moral authority: Helen Brent MD

    Carol-Ann FarkasBoston, Massachussetts, United States In the late nineteenth century, many women who dared to study and practice medicine tempered that radical move with the reassuring insistence that, by virtue of their sex, they could combine medical knowledge with feminine, maternal guidance for the physical and moral well-being of their patients. The gender essentialism of…

  • Gymnopédie

    Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, UK Oblique et coupant l’ombre un torrent éclatantRuisselait en flots d’or sur la dalle polieOù les atomes d’ambre au feu se miroitantMêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie [English translation]: Slanting and shadow-cutting a bursting streamTrickled in gusts of gold on the shiny flagstoneWhere the amber atoms in the fire gleamingMingled their sarabande…

  • “Blood made White”: The relationship between blood and breastmilk in early modern England

    Jennifer EvansSara ReadUnited Kingdom The early modern body was thought to be composed of and ordered by an intricate balance of fluids, the most important of which was blood. Blood was universally understood to have two origins: the heart and the liver. Together with the brain, these organs formed what Galen called “the noble organs.”…

  • Medicinal leeches in art and literature

    Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States For more than two thousand years, the extraordinary blood-sucking abilities of the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) provided physicians with an unusual if not bizarre alternative to venesection, cupping, and scarification for blood-letting their patients (Figure 1). This therapeutic use of leeches was described in the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Nicander…

  • From here

    Rasa RafieColorado, United States In college, we were the top of our class, the winners of scholarships and awards, the leaders of campus organizations. We were the ones our classmates looked up to and the names our teachers used as examples. We worked hard and those efforts delivered results—good grades, MCAT scores, and finally medical…