Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: mental illness

  • George Bernard Shaw: Medical

    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), the Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and Nobel Prize winner, was one of the great satirists of modern times. He left his mark not only on literature and theater but also on social and political thought. Among his many lifelong concerns, medicine… Read more

  • Caligula revisited

    Caligula, the third Roman Emperor, reigned from 37 to 41 CE and has been described in history as a cruel, perverted tyrant. His full name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Born in 12 CE, he was the son of Germanicus (a beloved Roman general,… Read more

  • Pauline Chaponnière-Chaix

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Pauline Chaponnière-Chaix (1850–1934) was a nurse and activist born in Geneva, Switzerland. After her husband died, she went to Paris to join the House of Deaconesses of Reuilly, a Protestant religious community founded in 1841 that provided outreach to the poor. Chaponnière-Chaix worked… Read more

  • Rudyard Kipling: Medical

    Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), the British writer best known for The Jungle Book, Kim, and his haunting short stories, lived a life profoundly intertwined with medicine. Though not a physician, Kipling’s experiences of illness, grief, and global travel exposed him to medical realities that shaped both… Read more

  • Samuel Johnson: Medical

    Samuel Johnson, immortalized as “Dr. Johnson,” was not only the towering man of letters of eighteenth-century England but also a figure whose life was profoundly shaped by medicine—or the lack of it. His Dictionary of the English Language (1755) cemented his place in literary history,… Read more

  • Ernest Hemingway: Medical

    Ernest Hemingway, a figure of immense influence in the 20th century, is often remembered for his public persona as an adventurer, hunter, and war correspondent. His adventurous life, well-documented and marked by personal struggles, began with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.… Read more

  • Goethe: Medical

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is universally celebrated as one of Germany’s greatest literary figures, the author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther. However, his profound contributions to medicine and natural science remain less widely known despite their impact on medical thought and… Read more

  • Galen: Medical

    Few figures in the history of medicine have left a legacy as profound and enduring as Claudius Galenus, better known simply as Galen. Born in Pergamon in 129 CE, Galen was educated in the vibrant intellectual centers of the Greco-Roman world, studying philosophy, anatomy, and… Read more

  • Fyodor Dostoevsky: Medical

    Few literary giants have intertwined so intimately with medicine as Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881). His turbulent life and writings reveal an ongoing struggle with chronic illness, psychological torment, and an acute awareness of the body’s fragility. Medicine was not simply a backdrop in his life;… Read more

  • Denis Diderot: Medical

    Denis Diderot (1713–1784) stands among the most influential figures of the Enlightenment. Best known as editor of the Encyclopédie and as a philosopher, novelist, and art critic, he was also deeply engaged with medical knowledge, both as a personal concern and as an intellectual frontier.… Read more

  • Aristotle: Medical

    Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, is remembered primarily as a philosopher, yet his contributions to medicine and biology are equally significant. In an age when philosophy, science, and medicine were not rigidly separated, Aristotle sought to understand… Read more

  • Medical terminologies inspired by the animal world

    Saty Satya-MurtiSanta Maria, California, United States In the transitional decades from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, restrictions against human cadaveric dissection gradually dissipated. This gave Italian and French anatomists an opportunity to break away from rigid dogmas and incorrect Galenic (Galen of Pergamon, 129–216 CE)… Read more