Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Maurice Blanchot

  • Love and death; Painting the farewell

    Giovanni CeccarelliRome, Italy When Ferdinand Hodler met Valentine Godé-Darel, a thirty-five-year-old woman divorced from a Sorbonne professor ruined by gambling, at the Kursaal in Geneva at the end of 1908 or beginning of 1909, he was already a famous painter. His two paintings Nighta and Day,b in which “the same spirit permeates all things, manifesting…

  • “The GBM in Room 9”: On the objectifying power of naming and diagnosing

    Atara MessingerToronto, Ontario, Canada I wheeled the patient through the double doors into the operating room. As I parked the hospital bed next to the operating table, I quickly glanced at the patient’s chart. NAME: ‘J.’ AGE: 28. HISTORY: Progressive headaches, visual changes, and right-sided weakness. IMAGING: MRI of the brain shows contrast-enhancing mass with…