Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Martin Luther King

  • Dr. Jochem Hoyer’s singular act of altruism

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’”— Martin Luther King, Jr. Kidney transplantation is the preferred form of treatment for chronic, permanent renal failure. Transplanted patients have better long-term survival than patients receiving repeated hemodialysis. There is, unfortunately, a shortage of usable kidneys worldwide. In the…

  • “The trial” of Dr. Spock

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.”1— Rudolf Virchow, M.D. (1821-1902) “It took me until my sixties to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics.”2— Benjamin Spock, M.D. Benjamin McLane Spock (1903-1998) was an American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child…

  • Hope

    Rima NasserBeirut, Lebanon “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not an incendiary rant about the politicians and people whose greed and inhumaneness pushed Lebanon into an abyss of ignorance and dereliction. This also is not a tale averring the grandeur of this magical country…

  • Review of Fracture: Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The lives of people who seem to be endowed with extraordinary abilities have long been a source of fascination. The famous Italian physician, researcher, and founder of the science of criminology, Cesare Lombroso, professed this interest in his 1889 book The Man of Genius, stating that genius was a form…