Tag: Hektorama
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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…
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Episteme and translation in an annotated copy of the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)
Sang Ik SongAdam S. KomorowskiLimerick, Ireland Processes of translation in European medieval medical episteme The episteme and movement of knowledge of medieval medicine in Europe is a syncretic, multifarious complexity that is often difficult to unravel. Medieval history in and of itself is a rarefied field where a good grasp of multiple languages and a…
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Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska: Immigrant, physician, teacher
Cynthia KramerWaianae, Hawaii, United States Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska was a female physician and teacher, at a time when women were not taken seriously in the field of medicine by their male counterparts. She served as head midwife at the Royal Charite Hospital in Berlin, Germany, then moved to the United States and received a doctor…
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Sir Roderick Glossop: Wodehouse’s “eminent loony doctor”
Paul DakinNorth London, UK P.G. Wodehouse is one of the greatest comic authors of the twentieth century. He wrote nearly a hundred books containing a fascinating array of characters. Many inhabited the confined geography of 1920’s London and country houses, with occasional trips to New York or the French Riviera. This was the world Wodehouse…
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Latin and medicine
Noah DeLoneMiami, Florida, United States Language is the cornerstone of our ability to communicate as humans and underlies the prose of our medical discourse. The words we select can be indicative of our background, training, and intentions. It should come as no surprise that a robust knowledge of one’s own language is essential to good…
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Synesthesia in medicine and the humanities
Eleni I. (Lena) ArampatzidouGreece Dr. Arampatzidou would like to dedicate this essay to Professor Alexander Nehamas, Director Dimitri Gondicas and the Stanley Seeger Center at Princeton University for their support and generosity in offering her a research fellowship in medical humanities which made this publication possible. Synesthesia (syn=plus + aesthesis=sensation in Greek) is a term used…
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Pushing back at perceptions of epilepsy: The interplay between medicine and literature in three 19th-century British novels
Laura FitzpatrickNew York, United States If I wished to show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience, I would give him the history of epilepsy to read.—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 18911 As the nineteenth century dawned, the average Briton still understood epilepsy much in the way his ancient Greek counterpart had: as…
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Sylvia Plath: The tortured artist?
Kathleen CoggshallSan Francisco, California, United States The image of a chain-smoking, booze-addled writer is a common one, occurring so frequently in modern culture that one begins to wonder if depressed people find solace in creative endeavors, or if the soul-searching process of crafting a sonnet or composing a musical piece puts one at higher risk…
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A difficult diagnosis: Humor—how we laugh at doctors
Kate BaggottSt. Catharines, Ontario, Canada “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it,”1 silent film star Charlie Chaplin wrote in his autobiography. Chaplin’s words do not exactly connect the funny bone to the humerus, and the anatomy of comedy has never been easy to chart, especially when it…