Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: mythology

  • Carl Gustav Jung

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Carl Jung. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Creative Commons. In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension,…

  • Emblems and psychological medicine on the Sutton Hoo purse

    Stephen Martin Durham, England, and Thailand   The recent film The Dig1 has brought into the wider public eye the story of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial.2 The burial mound, at Sutton Hoo, in Sussex, England,3,4 contained a high-status figure, almost certainly Royal. The most expensive of the grave goods5 are high-craftsmanship gold, set with very…

  • Asclepius at Epidaurus

    L. J. Sandlow George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   An Athenian seeking a cure for his afflictions in the fourth century BC had the option of visiting several competing sanctuaries, at Delphi, Olympia, or Epidaurus. To reach Epidaurus, the Athenian would bypass Megara and Corinth, then turn south and find himself at the shrine…

  • The feast of health: the Christian legacy of Hygeia

    Wilson F. Engel, III Gilbert, Arizona, United States   Figure 1. The Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 1510 AD. Michelangelo, Fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome.   Michelangelo’s famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel (Figure 1) shows the serpent tempting Eve on the left, and the archangel Raphael expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of…