Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Memory

  • A birth remembered

    F. Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Memory is to old age as presbyopia (far-sightedness) is to eyesight. Presbyopia makes you lose the ability to see clearly at a normal near working distance while maintaining a sharp distant vision. Just so the elderly recollect in painstaking detail what happened to them fifty or sixty years ago, yet…

  • Up north

    Richard BentleyAmherst, Massachusetts, United States He had come to Northern Michigan, and the lake gulls were shrieking at him. He had been on vacation only two days, but he sat around the cabin, springing up now and then to go to the window and back. It was too chilly to go out to the beach.…

  • Did Salvador Dali follow the prolactin discovery in his painting of the fountain of milk?

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States The Fountain of Milk Spreading Itself Uselessly on Three Shoes by Salvador Dali remains one of his most enigmatic works. It shows a nude woman on a pedestal, milk flowing from her breasts, while an emaciated man is staring at her.1 As he was completing the painting, Dali may have…

  • Forever young: The history and promise of young blood therapeutics

    Kelly ChenBirmingham, Alabama, United States Two mice waddle in unison. They eat together, drink together, and nest together. Their closeness is no act of nature—for on closer inspection a delicate line of sutures is seen connecting them from forelimb to hindlimb. They are linked by parabiosis, the surgical joining of two organisms. Parabiosis was first…

  • That hospital smell

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States What smells good to you? Do you know why? To many people smell seems of little significance, yet it is a powerful sense, having evolved earlier than the more complex senses of sight and hearing.1, 2 Smell is unique in how it is processed, being first detected by neurons which…

  • Where am I when my digital footprint persists indefinitely?

    Naomi Rachel OldhamWest London, United Kingdom Our digital selves remain present in the world even after we have died. Social media and email accounts, websites to which we have subscribed, photos, videos, and voice messages persist after death. What might this mean when considering an individual’s presence or absence in the world? Throughout different periods…

  • The treasure trove of memory

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Memory, the ability to recall at will previous events and various facts, is a precious mental faculty, an asset that underpins learning, knowledge, and experience in any field of human endeavor. In medicine its value is undeniable, though for legal as well as practical purposes, it must be supplemented with written records:…