Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Helen Keller

  • Louis Braille: wondrous gift, punishing recipe

    Lauren HillWalnut Cove, North Carolina, United StatesJack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States “… as need, the mother of all inventions, taught them …”— Thomas Hobbs, from Leviathan Helen Keller is reputed to have said, “We the blind are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg.”1 The life of Louis Braille (1809–1852), complete…

  • “Scarlet letters” — The depiction of scarlet fever in literature

    Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland Scarlet fever, named for the erythematous skin rash that may accompany streptococcal infections (Fig 1), is often considered a disease of Victorian times. Associated with high levels of morbidity and mortality (up to 25%) when epidemics were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the US,1,2 it is seen less…