Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Israel

  • Old dogs teach psychology

    Simon WeinPetach Tikva, Israel The dog is a man’s best friend. Cats, horses, cows, rabbits, dolphins, and rarely goldfish are also good friends to humans, but none compare with the dog. In support of this contention, there are many wonderful books and films about dogs. The other animals, especially horses, are also the subjects of…

  • Melville’s Bartleby: An absurd casualty

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He did not want to be pinned down as an existentialist or an absurdist, or indeed a nihilist. Nevertheless, he is well known for coining the expression ‘the absurd hero’. Camus used the Greek myth of Sisyphus to illustrate this idea. Sisyphus’s…

  • Medical tourism

    Kozlova LiudmylaMykolaiv, Ukraine Medical tourism is a highly profitable industry that offers a range of medical procedures, highly specialized medical services, and tourism opportunities. It combines travel for health and medical services with recreational tourism. While on the one hand, medical tourism may reduce the current and future health capital of a country through its…

  • When daydreaming becomes a problem

    S.T GamageColombo, Sri Lanka “They say there’s no harm in daydreaming, but there is.”— Charlaine Harris An excessive amount of daydreaming can lead to a psychological condition called maladaptive daydreaming (MD). It is also known as daydreaming disorder. Professor Eliezer Somer from the University of Haifa, Israel, first identified this condition. It is a disorder…

  • Trijntje Keever—a tall tale

    Orit Pinhas-HamielHamiel UriTirosh AmitRamat Gan, Israel There is a life-size painting in the city of Edam in The Netherlands that portrays a girl who is exceptionally tall with disproportionately long hands. The artist is unknown, but the name of the girl in the picture is Trijntje Keever. Trijntje was born in April 1616, the daughter…

  • Syndrome K and the Fatebenefratelli Hospital

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the whole world.”— Talmud (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)1 Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany and was required to enact anti-Semitic laws.2 Beginning in September 1938, Jewish students were excluded from public schools, no new Jewish students could enter universities, and Jewish teachers…

  • The snake, the staff, and the healer

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Introduction In some ancient cultures, especially around the Near East, the snake was involved in healing. Today this seems counterintuitive. There are as many as 130,000 deaths from snake bites worldwide each year and three times that number of amputations and severe disabilities. Ophidiophobia is one of the more common phobias,…

  • A moonie

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Wally Moon was a legend who stood at least 1.90 meters tall. The most striking things about him were his appearance and his gruffness. When I met him during my residency he was in his early sixties. He had a magnificent girth, fuelled by quantities of non-politically correct food—even then in…

  • Dead Sea: Health claims and tourist delights

    After the death of Alexander the Great, the land now comprising Israel and Jordan fell under the successive domination of the Seleucid kings, Rome, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and the British empire. Lying in almost the center of that area is the Dead Sea. It is actually not a sea but rather a salt-water lake, and…