Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Illinois

  • Soul power

    Shannon Adams-Hartung Chicago, Illinois, United States   Cooking fried supper for a benefit picnic supper on the grounds of St. Thomas’ Church, near Bardstown, Kentucky. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, August 7, 1940. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Black & White Negatives Collection, LC-USF33-030967-M4. Soul food has deep historical, cultural, and economic…

  • A celebrated occasion

    Eli Ehrenpreis Chicago, Illinois, United States   Artwork by Annie Trincot.       She arrives at the office early, looking as if she stepped from a portrait. Her blue eyes glimmer with tears. “My gynecologist has been treating me for hemorrhoids, but the bleeding has been getting worse. It started when I had my…

  • “My dear neoplasm:” Sigmund Freud’s oral cancer

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United states   Sigmund Freud circa 1921. Photo by Max Halberstadt. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. When the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, died in London early on the morning of September 23, 1939, he succumbed to what he wryly referred to as “my dear old cancer with which I have…

  • Entomophagy: History, global food shortage, and climate change

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1 – Khoisan – Igniting a Fire On a recent wildlife adventure to the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, our group of adventurers was treated to an afternoon walk with a group of local Khoisan villagers. They were eager to show us how they were able to…

  • Reading Lacan 1 – Reading Lacan 2 – Identification with the Aggressor

    Sean Murphy Chicago, Illinois, United States   Created after reading the work of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Reading Lacan 1 (top) and Reading Lacan 2 (bottom left) capture the abstract nature of his baroque speaking and writing styles. At the same time, they maintain through a bright color palette one goal of psychoanalysis: cure—and with…

  • Gain of function

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Darien, Illinois, United States   “It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.” – Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)   SARS-CoV-2 virus anatomy with proteins labeled. Created by Maya Peters Kostman for the Innovative Genomics Institute. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. “Gain of Function” (GoF) burst into…

  • Villanelle

    Jolene Won Chicago, Illinois, United States   Photo by Sandy Torchon on Pexels. I did not know today would be your last – we see no end for those that we hold dear. If I had known I’d not have let it pass. The nurse who knows she can’t set down her tasks continues on,…

  • The appendicitis conundrum

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Nathaniel Koo Darien, Illinois, United States   Lorenz Heister (1683–1758) was a German surgeon and anatomist. In 1711, he described acute appendicitis in great detail and suggested that it be treated. From Institutiones chirurgicae, in quibus quicquid ad rem chirurgicam pertinet optima et novissima ratione pertractatur, Neapel, Antonio Cervone, 1749. Via Wikimedia. No…

  • Orion H. Stuteville: a surgeon’s surgeon

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Darien, Illinois, United States Bangalore Jayaram Mysuru, Karnataka, India   There is no controversy that Hera became angry at Tiresias and turned him into a woman. However, there are two versions of the cause of her anger. It was either because Tiresias struck a couple of copulating snakes or because he sided with…

  • Metastatic sarcoma

    Tulsi Patel Chicago, Illinois, United States   His big regret was never building his son a trampoline, now locked away in the shed like some treasure chest he can’t open. Eyes welling up, he says to me proudly, resignedly “16 tumors” before he coughs up a river of rotten red roses. A Foot Bridge, North…