Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: John Milton

  • William Wordsworth: “The blind poet”?

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He was the totemic father of the Lakeland poets, who extolled the relation between man and the natural world: a wedding between nature and the human mind that to him symbolized the mind of God. A prolific writer…

  • “Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing

    Katherine Harvey London, England, United Kingdom   A medieval miniature showing St Mark reading a book and holding spectacles to his eyes. From Jean Poyer, The Tilliot Hours (c. 1500), The British Library. On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half…

  • Sidelined

    Katherine WhiteRockville, Maryland, United States From the safety of my home, I watch the unfolding of the slow-motion car wreck that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Retired from the practice of neonatal medicine for over eight years, my medical license has been inactive for half that time. In my state of Maryland, the web page for…

  • An abominable habit

    Michael Crossland London, United Kingdom   Onania, by John Marten. 1730. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (accessed April 4, 2019). Link Jay is a large man in his twenties with a plume of unruly red hair, giving him the air of an oversized rooster. He is a great storyteller with a contagious laugh, and I always…