Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hitler

  • Young Hitler’s blindness in World War I

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel During World War I, Corporal Adolf Hitler became blind during a gas attack in the trenches. He was examined by a young Jewish military physician, Karl Kroner, whose differential diagnosis was blindness due to mustard gas, malingering, shellshock, and/or “hysterical” blindness. He recommended transfer to the care of the famous neuro-psychiatrist…

  • Dictator on the couch: The only known psychological treatment of Adolf Hitler

    Robert M. KaplanAustralia It is perhaps not widely known that Adolf Hitler, one of the most fanatical and murderous personalities in history, underwent psychological treatment early in his political career. It happened in November 1924. He was at the time a right-wing activist and rabble-rouser arrested after mounting a coup against the Bavarian government, the…

  • Dr. Alice Miller on Hitler’s childhood

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “All it took was a Führer’s madness and several million well-raised Germans to extinguish the lives of countless millions of innocent human beings in the space of a few short years.”—Alice Miller, Ph.D. This article is based on the chapter “Adolf Hitler’s childhood: From hidden to manifest horror,” in Alice Miller, For…

  • Professor Bernhardi, a play by Arthur Schnitzler, M.D.

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A spiteful something has been fabricated out of an innocent nothing.”—Dr. Löwenstein in Professor Bernhardi Professor Bernhardi: A Comedy in Five Acts (1912) is one of seventeen plays written by Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), a Viennese physician who also published two novels and twelve short stories or novellas. He belonged to a non-observant…

  • Béla Bartók (1881-1945): The years in America, triumph over tragedy

    James L. FranklinGeorge DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States Black clouds of war were hanging over the world when Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory (1903-1982) disembarked in New York Harbor on October 30, 1940. For the remainder of his life, Bartók would learn, as had Dante, “. . . how salt the taste of another…

  • A moment of philosophy

    Nishitha BujalaHyderabad, Telangana, India I seem to be in a constant state of anxiety these days. With my one-year plans and goals seemingly disrupted by the pandemic, my medical licensing exams postponed, my ability to focus shrunk to the size of a peanut, my interest to study equaling that of a bored cat, I cannot…

  • Lina Shtern and the blood brain barrier

    Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada Future generations will remember our age for unbelievable electronic progress, but also for the bloody conflicts of World War II, characterized by dictatorial figures that darkened the lives of so many productive, innocent people. Among these was Dr. Lina Shtern, whose pioneer work permitted her to envision and name the blood-brain…

  • How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny

    JMS PearceHull, England In March 1933 while visiting Vienna, William Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics, learned that Hitler had just decreed it illegal for “non-Aryan,” mostly Jewish people to hold posts in the Civil Service. Many lawyers, doctors, and academics were deemed “undesirable” and dismissed instantly. Nazi concentration camps, mass desecration, medical…

  • Norman Bethune’s mobile blood transfusions

    Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada Norman Bethune was born in Ontario’s cottage country in 1895 to missionary parents who influenced him to try to improve conditions for mankind. This resulted in his drive to elaborate grandiose plans that were often unrealized. One important exception was a Spanish sojourn that provided him with a unique opportunity as…