Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Miasma

  • The memorial of Thomas Johnson, eighteenth-century barber surgeon

    Stephen MartinDurham, UK, and Thailand In the churchyard of St. Brandon in Brancepeth1 village, County Durham, UK, is an unusual headstone monument.2 (Fig 1) Dating to the very last year of the eighteenth century, it has three sections, including the name and dates, and then a cryptic verse pertaining to judgment. Carved in relief within…

  • Giovanni Boccaccio on pandemics past and present

    Constance MarkeyChicago, IL Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is universally celebrated for his masterpiece The Decameron, an appealing assemblage of one hundred loosely connected novellas, all designed, in part, to distract the fourteenth-century Italian audience from the Black Death plaguing the country. Some of the tales are slapstick misadventures to make the reader laugh, others are more…

  • Washing our hands

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ever since Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, washed his hands before condemning Jesus Christ to death by crucifixion, this simple act of personal sanitation has been used as the figurative icon of a disclaimer, the denial of responsibility. Today, in the climate of the current COVID-19 pandemic, handwashing is not…