Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Judaism

  • Revising my bargain with the deity

    Barry PerlmanNew York, New York, United States My parents lived into their nineties. Before they died, they endured years of dementia. Aware of my potential genetic inheritance, I have long harbored a deep dread of what my future might hold. If my curved pinky fingers were inherited from my mother and my flat feet and…

  • Faith, neuroscience, and “the thorn” in Paul’s side: Abrahamic interpretations of epilepsy

    Christina PerriStony Brook, New York, United States The experience of epileptic seizures, as characterized by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and others, resonates with the intense religious consciousness of shamans, who describe losing all sense of time, place, and even self.1 Most religious traditions have complex or even ugly relationships with epilepsy that offer explanations for…

  • Public health measures derived from the Jewish tradition: III. The Bris: Jewish ritual circumcision and hemophilia

    Matthew MigliozziDavid ForsteinSarah RindnerRobert SternNew York City, New York, United States Historically, Jewish contributions to public health measures have not been given adequate attribution. The previous articles in this series have documented (1) the ancient Jewish recognition of the importance of isolating individuals with an infectious disease; (2) recognition of tuberculosis as an infectious disorder…

  • Is healthcare a right?

    Ronald PiesBoston, Massachusetts, United States Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Introduction In this paper, I examine the question of whether healthcare is regarded as a “basic human right” in the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Though there are significant…