Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: motor neuron disease

  • E.T.A. Hoffmann’s neurological disease

    Nicolás RoblesBadajoz, Spain Ich bin das, was ich scheine, und scheine das nicht, was ich bin, mir selbst ein unerklärlich Rätsel, bin ich entzweit mit meinem Ich!I am what I seem and do not seem what I am, an inexplicable mystery to myself, am I at odds with myself!— E.T.A. Hoffmann, Die Elixiere des Teufels…

  • Shostakovich and his mysterious neurologic disease

    For most of his life Dmitri Shostakovich lived under the shadow of Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator of the Soviet Union. In 1936, Stalin and some members of the Politburo attended a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Stalin did not like it. The next day, the opera was criticized, denounced, and ridiculed in…