Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Jews

  • Movie review: Pressure Point—Treating the hateful patient

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “You sing ‘My country ’tis of thee’ while they walk all over you.”—The patient, Pressure Point Pressure Point (1962) is a “doctor movie” that is “all but unknown to the general public.”1 This is unfortunate, since it contains important messages as well as some splendid acting. The story is told as a…

  • 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…

  • The good, the bad, and the regrettable

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Man . . . cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”— Frederick Nietzsche What follows is a description of different aspects of studying medicine at an old, highly regarded Catholic university in Europe a half-century ago. The Good For…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Fasting: For body and spirit

    Isabel AzevedoPorto, Portugal Having struggled with the obesity epidemic for decades,1,2 the scientific and health care communities are now giving attention to the effects of fasting for preventing and treating this important health problem. Appearing at first sight to be a simple issue of energetic balance, obesity has been shown instead to be a complex…

  • I’m not sure I’m so ethical

    Paul KettlPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA I’m not sure I’m so ethical. Don’t get me wrong. I think I’m a good doctor, and I don’t do bad things like sleep with my patients, beat my wife, or kick the dog. But I’m just not sure anymore I’m as ethical in my practice as I should be. It…