Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hektoen

  • The names of things

    Joseph HodappCupertino, California, USA It’s a gray-sky, late-October afternoon. I just got home from work when I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. The caller ID provides a brief preface: Mom. “Hey Mom, what’s up?” “Hey Hun, I wanted to call you right away… my mom had a stroke this morning.” Her words are…

  • Madness and gender in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet

    Sarah BahrIndianapolis, Indiana, United States In director Gregory Doran’s 2009 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, David Tennant’s Hamlet becomes a bawdy lunatic who consciously or unconsciously uncouples himself from reality. The intentionality of Hamlet’s madness is more muddled than in Shakespeare’s text because of the confrontational quality Tennant lends to the prince’s mental angst. Tennant…

  • “If it be a poor man”: Medieval medical treatment for the rich and poor

    Erin Connelly Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States “Urine Wheel,” Almanack, Free Library of Philadelphia – The Rosenbach, MS 1004/29, fol. 9 C (York, England, 1364), courtesy of Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis. OPenn Repository Great disparities in wealth and differences in access to healthcare between the top and bottom of society are hardly new experiences in human history.1-4 Even…

  • How not to make the consultation sexy

    Claire ElliottLondon, Ukrain Why do patients allow physicians to carry out an intimate examination barely ten minutes after they have met? As John Berger wrote in 1967, “We give the doctor access to our bodies. Apart from the doctor, we only grant such access voluntarily to lovers – and many are frightened to do even…

  • Bones and Bots: what classic science fiction tells us about contemporary medicine

    Greg BeattyBellingham, Washington, United States In the original Star Trek, the real Star Trek, there were several major recurring characters. There was of course James Tiberius Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise, the ever conflicted Vulcan first officer Mr. Spock, the charmingly clichéd Scottish engineer “Scotty,” and of course the chief medical officer Dr. Leonard “Bones”…

  • Not by blood

    Simon EdberPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Raven knows exactly how she joined the family: “She didn’t want me so she took me to the hospital, and then you came and bought me from the hospital.” Well, almost exactly. “I didn’t buy you,” Cathy corrects her from across the room, smiling but not daring to laugh. Even…

  • An emperor unclothed: The virtuous Osler

    Patrick FiddesPaul A. KomesaroffMelbourne, Australia Apart from Hippocrates himself, William Osler was among the most praised physicians of all time. Like his Greek forerunner, Osler amassed a huge following of loyal supporters, for whom he could evidently do no wrong. One went so far as to suggest that Osler was: “the greatest physician of all…

  • How to treat a broken heart: An instruction guide

    Kate BaggottOntario, Canada Human beings are callous creatures. We pursue our own agendas, desires, and happiness at the expense of those who would love us. We have all done it. We have all disputed the purity of another’s love. We have all had our hearts broken in turn. We all know this state; of mourning,…

  • Shackleton’s angel

    Paul G. FirthBoston, Massachusetts, United States South Georgia Island is a tortured upheaval of mountain and glacier that falls in chaos to the jagged coastline of the South Atlantic Ocean.1 From thirty miles of this wind-blasted sub-Antarctic wilderness came walking on the afternoon of the 20 May 1916 “a terrible-looking trio of scarecrows,” soaked to…

  • Katherine Anne Porter and the 1918 influenza epidemic

    Cristóbal S. Berry-CabánFort Bragg, North Carolina, United States In Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter weaves the horrors of the Great War, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and the near-death experience of a young woman in love with a doomed American soldier into a memorable novella.1 Porter was born on May 15, 1890, in the…