Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Jews

  • Movie review: Pressure Point – treating the hateful patient

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “You sing ‘My country ’tis of thee’ while they walk all over you.” — The patient, Pressure Point   German American Bund rally (1938 or 1939). From “Battle of the United States”, produced by Army Information Branch, Army Pictorial Service, Air Forces, and Navy Department in cooperation with all united…

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

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Tug-of-war. Photo by KamPraProductions for Foreign Affairs’s production of Professor Bernhardi. Used with permission.   “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…

  • The good, the bad, and the regrettable

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “Man . . . cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.” — Frederick Nietzsche   Lab coat and scrubs. Photo by Samir. 2006. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. What follows is a description of different aspects of…

  • Syndrome K and the Fatebenefratelli Hospital

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Giovanni Borromeo – Italian doctor – Righteous Among the Nations. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 “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…

  • How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Signatories to Letter to The Times, 22 May 1933 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…

  • 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 Kettl Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA   An abandoned mental hospital. Photography by Jarle Naustvik 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…