Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Momento mori

  • The Girl with a Pearl Earring—A vanitas?

    James LindesayLeicester, United Kingdom It is a truism that you only have one opportunity to see a picture for the first time. However, in our image-saturated age, by the time you get to see a famous painting in the flesh (so to speak) you will have been so primed with reproductions, commentaries, and received opinions…

  • Death and dying

    Tolani OlonisakinPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Six weeks after I turned eighteen, I lost my father. I was told he died of a cardiac arrest. One minute he was reading the morning paper, and the next minute he lay sprawled across the living room floor, lifeless and inanimate. I had not seen the man in two years;…