Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: James L. Franklin

  • All too human: The mountain gorillas of Uganda

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The Ugandan mountain gorilla is a member of the Hominidae family, also known as the great Apes. The extant species include: the orangutan, the eastern and western gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo, and ourselves—Homo sapiens. The mountain gorilla is one of two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. The one…

  • George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War: A brush with death

    James Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Picture of George Orwell, which appears in an old accreditation for the BNUJ. Internet Archive. Via Wikimedia. Robert Capa’s “The Fallen Soldier” is the iconic photograph of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The original title was “Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Carro Muriano, September 5, 1936.”…

  • A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States Albert Sabin (second from left) and Mikhail Chumakov (third from left). Credit: Courtesy Hauck Center for the Albert B. Sabin Archives, Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, University of Cincinnati Libraries. Fair Use. In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international…

  • Philip Roth’s Nemesis: a lesson for today

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Polio patient in a wheelchair. Images like this were used to encourage individuals to receive polio vaccinations, which were made available in April 1955. CDC Public Health Library. Source.  As we grapple with the impact of the current pandemic caused by the coronavirus, Covid–19, we may wish to…

  • The last illness of Édouard Manet

    George Dunea James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Édouard Manet. 1881–1882. The Courtauld Institute of Art. Via Wikimedia. Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was one of the most famous modernist painters of nineteenth-century France. He painted life as creatively and elegantly as he lived in it, translating onto canvas the fashionable salons, racetracks,…

  • The smell of burning rubber: The fatal illness of George Gershwin

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, USA George Gershwin, 28 March 1937. Photograph by Carl Van Vetchen. 1937. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. On the morning of Monday July 12, 1937, New Yorkers who had just suffered through five days of a heat wave that left thirty-eight people dead, awoke to read on the…

  • The sound of one hand clapping: meditations on sinistrality

    James L. Franklin   Paper presented to the Chicago Literary Club on April 7, 2008  It all began on the coldest morning of the season in early December 2006. Painters were still in our apartment putting the finishing touches on what had proven to be an all too prolonged renovation project. However—the end was now…

  • Revisiting a medical classic

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Théophile Alajouanine (1890–1980) Théophile Alajouanine delivered the Harveian Lecture to the Harveian Society of London on March 17, 1948. It was published in the journal Brain in September 1948 and became a medical classic, most frequently cited in papers devoted to the neurology of musical creativity and…

  • Eisenhower and Crohn’s Disease

    James L. Franklin  First Published in the Illinois Carol Fisher Chapter Newsletter of September 11, 2005. Published by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.    It is still well within the public consciousness that Dwight David Eisenhower suffered a myocardial infarction three years into his first term of office as President of the United…

  • Book review: The stomach – A biography by Jeremy Hugh Baron

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Jeremy Hugh Baron, a well-lettered physician, scientist, and scholar takes us through a comprehensive tour of the “The Stomach” in recorded history. It is immediately apparent that Dr. Baron is not limiting himself to the anatomical organ, but to what the patient suffering from abdominal distress perceives to be…