Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Maryland

  • To my colleagues in Ukraine whom I saw on TV

    Barry MeisenbergBaltimore, Maryland, United States Limestone fragments of the “Vulture Stele” now in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France. A stele is a stone pillar erected as a monument to some great event. This stele was created circa 2500 BC to celebrate the victory of King Eannatum of Lagash over Ush, king of Umma. In the…

  • Reconstructing memories and history in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

    Tonse N.K. RajuGaithersburg, Maryland, United States “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” In the opening sentence of his extraordinary masterpiece, Gabriel García Márquez distilled the recurring themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude1: the absurdity…

  • Learning the meaning of love

    Charlotte EliopoulosGlen Arm, Maryland, United States In the summer before my senior year in high school, I spent my vacation as a candy striper. In the sixties, this was an opportunity for young girls interested in nursing to serve as hospital volunteers and gain some insight into their career of choice. Being young and naïve—and…

  • The sleep of doctors

    Barry MeisenbergAnnapolis, Maryland, United States The gods who rule 2AM summon the doctor from sleep to the sequestered place where the veneer of unearned pride is bleached away. You forgot to re-order a sodium level on the whiskered old fisherman with lung cancer. It was low last week and might be lower tomorrow. He looked…

  • The unsung heroes

    Julia AngkeowBel Air, Maryland, United States The unsung heroes of hospice are the family members and friends who are there to console their loved ones when all others have gone to bed. They are the ones who never rest, constantly brooding over how to best mitigate their loved ones’ pain, and ensure that their final…

  • Covid battleground

    Elena WilsonRockville, Maryland, United States Up and down, up and down they riseForgetting so easily all of the criesCries for help, cries for changeCries for more, cries for days Down and up, and down they fallSeeking hope, finding wallsWalls of iron, walls of steelWalls of words, walls of kneels Change is brewing, slowly soonA coming…

  • The amnesic jokester

    Jason BrandtBaltimore, Maryland, United States Bob T. had suffered a stroke. Not the kind of massive, devastating stroke that left him bereft of language (aphasia), or that rendered him paralyzed on one side of his body (hemiplegia). No, this was a very small stroke deep within his brain; in the medial-dorsal thalamus of the left…

  • The Hopkins Hub

    Shelley CoNew York, United States It was at the site of a former insane asylum and at the discretion of a man named Johns Hopkins, a banker, philanthropist, and abolitionist, that the Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland.1 Hopkins died on Christmas Eve 1873 at age seventy-eight, and in his will left…