Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Literary Vignettes

  • Suicide: always a tragedy?

    JMS PearceHull, England   The tragedy of suicide is well expressed in “The romantic suicide: Karoline von Günderrode” by Nicolás Roberto Robles.1 We all try hard to understand this act. Self-destructive urges are an ubiquitous but often ignored or suppressed aspect of all human life. But what makes a person take their own life is…

  • The romantic suicide: Karoline von Günderrode

    Nicolás Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Suicide, often occurring as an impulsive gesture or from underlying depression, has long been an important cause of death among young people, as exemplified within recent memory by the wave of suicides that followed the death of Marilyn Monroe. Historically, in the preromantic period, it was precipitated by the suicide of…

  • August Von Platen, inspiration for Death in Venice

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Bandajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Portrait of August Graft von Platen. Unknown Author – Holzstich 1879 In Gustav Adolf von Klöden: “Unser Deutsches Land und Volk” (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München/Porträtsammlung). Via Wikimedia. Public Domain. Weil da, wo Schönheit waltet, Liebe waltet Because where beauty reigns, love reigns – Sonette aus Venedig.   August…

  • Who is “Dr. Filth”?

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence. The group includes a few twins. Still from the Soviet Film of the liberation of Auschwitz by the film unit of the First Ukrainian Front-Alexander Voronzow. 1945. Via Wikimedia. Public Domain. Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row”…

  • Indo-European for health professionals

    Logo of the Asiatic Society of Bengal depicting Sir William Jones. 1905. Via Wikimedia. The Indo-Europeans were a group of people whose language is presumed to be the ancestor of most modern languages spoken in Europe and in parts of Asia. They left behind almost no tangible evidence of their existence other than some funeral…

  • Art or science, doctor or shaman?

    Ihar Kazak Florida, United States    BEFORE: Centuries ago, such ailment was treated by a shaman. Image credit: A surgeon treating an injury to a man’s foot. Oil painting by a follower of David Teniers the younger. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark It all started with a scratch on my right ankle during a close…

  • Omphalos

    Margaret Nowaczyk Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Chambered Nautilus Shell – detail. Photo by Jitze Couperus, 2008, on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Once, I linked you to the woman who gave birth to you: for forty weeks, a twisted pearly cord, pulsing with two syncopated heartbeats, bound you two together. It fed you and gave you oxygen.…

  • A Regency epitaph for a child

    Stephen Martin County Durham, UK   In some spot where common herbage grows Perchance a violet rears its purple head: Some careful gardener plucks it ere it blows To spread and flourish in a nobler bed: Such was thy fate dear child, thy opening such Pre-eminence in early bloom was shown: Too good for earth…

  • Companionable books

    “Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of life. “By companionable books I mean…

  • A treatment for “circular insanity”: Joseph Roth’s Radetzky March

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States   Madness and decay of society permeate Joseph Roth’s brooding novel The Radetsky March (1932). One character, Herr von Taussig, experiences attacks of “circular insanity.”1 The recommended cure is an institution on Lake Constance, where Von Taussig receives treatment by “mundane and feather-brained physicians who prescribe ‘spiritual emotions,’ just…