Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Mildred Wilson

  • The paradoxical life and art of Robert Colescott

    Mildred WilsonMichigan, United States In 1975, satirist Robert Colescott turned the art community on its head with Eat Dem Taters, a parody of van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters.1,2 He and other postmodernist painters of the period would appropriate images from other artists’ paintings, questioning the concept of originality,2 and his George Washington Carver Crossing the…

  • Mark Rothko and the dialogue in his mind

    Mildred WilsonDetroit, MI “The mind is what the brain does—and more. The mind has a mind of its own. The main business of the mind is to mind its own business.”— Edwin S. Shneidman1 Mark Rothko was one of the most celebrated abstract expressionist painters in the twentieth century. In 1961, he opened a two-month…

  • Ambroise Pare: Standard bearer for barber-surgery reform

    Mildred WilsonDetroit, MI “There are five duties of surgery: to remove what is superfluous, to restore what has been dislocated, to separate what has grown together, to reunite what has been divided, and to redress the defects of nature.”—Ambroise Pare1 For centuries, barbers throughout Europe assisted monks in bloodletting. In 1163, Pope Alexander III issued…

  • Passion, paint, and pain: the journey of Robert Seldon Duncanson

    Mildred WilsonDetroit, MI, USA Lead poisoning (saturnism) has been present throughout history.1 Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini is considered the first to have made the connection between paint and artists’ health. In his book De Morbis Artificum Diatriba published in 1700, he stated, “The many painters I have known, almost all I found unhealthy. . .…

  • Lord Byron and his strange relationship with food

    Mildred Wilson “. . . I would rather not exist than be large.” Lord Byron – Trinity College (1805-1808) On April 15, 1805, George Gordon Byron wrote to Hargreaves Hanson, a fellow classmate at the prestigious school for boys Harrow, in conjunction with a planned visit to Hanson’s home: “. . . wish that you…