Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: leukemia

  • Béla Bartók (1881-1945): The years in America, triumph over tragedy

    James L. Franklin George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   Fig 1. Béla Bartók in 1927. Unknown Photographer. Via Wikimedia. Black clouds of war were hanging over the world when Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory (1903-1982) disembarked in New York Harbor on October 30, 1940. For the remainder of his life, Bartók would…

  • Twins

    John Graham-Pole Clydesdale, Nova Scotia, Canada   Artwork by Susan Napier. Published with permission. Why was she taken? While you remain to question me for your school project? Renee had a project. Her seventh-grade class had been set the task of composing an essay on some aspect of American society. She had settled on tackling…

  • Leukemia past and present: Lessons learned and future opportunities

    Nada HusseinGiza, Egypt “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward,” said Winston Churchill in a meeting at The Royal College of Physicians in 1944. At that time, leukemia was a fatal disease.1 Representing 8% of all cancers incidence today,2 it had long been regarded as an inflammatory disorder because of…

  • Blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm: An inseparable balance?

    John Graham-PoleClydesdale, NS, Canada Life blood: Humor and health In 1960, I entered St. Bartholomew’s Medical School on a full classics scholarship. I was a devotee of Hippocrates, with high hopes of embarking on a path of uniting medical science with the healing arts. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” was…

  • Blood is NOT the essence of life?

    Mair ZamirLondon, Ontario, Canada We think of blood somewhat reverently as the essence of life. Yet we miss the point. The essence of life is not blood, it is blood flow. When the heart stops beating the body dies, not because of lack of blood but because of lack of blood flow. In most cases…

  • The oncologist’s mask

    Prasad Iyer Timah Road, Singapore   H.J. Pollitt: Hypnotized. Frederick H. Evans. Early 20th century. Philadelphia Museum of Art. As a pediatric oncologist I have learned to put on an invisible mask before seeing my patients and their parents. I try to bring them some cheer and keep the enveloping darkness at bay, if only…

  • From enigma to Jeremy

    Ami Schattner Jerusalem, Israel   The Doctor. Sir Luke Fildes. Exhibited 1891. Photo © Tate. CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported). One day each week I leave my hospital to serve as a consultant in ambulatory internal medicine. General practitioners from the area refer difficult patients to me, and thus my encounters vary from the very simple to…

  • La Pieta

    Rachel Fleishman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   La Pieta, 1498–1499, Michelangelo, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Via Wikipedia. CC BY 2.5. A mother holds her dead child. His body flops open without resistance, freshly dead. His head is cocked back, shoulder lifted, arms release the last vestige of grip. Her face sullen, her hand beside…

  • Not by blood

    Simon EdberPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Raven knows exactly how she joined the family: “She didn’t want me so she took me to the hospital, and then you came and bought me from the hospital.” Well, almost exactly. “I didn’t buy you,” Cathy corrects her from across the room, smiling but not daring to laugh. Even…

  • Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man

    Philip R. Liebson In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is no known…