Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: paralysis

  • “Get well soon”: Rapid recovery in two children’s novels

    Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland The sudden recovery of paralyzed patients is as thrilling as it is unlikely and has often been memorably portrayed in books and film. Some paralysis, such as occurs after spinal cord injury, is permanent. However, gradual physiologic recovery from a paralyzing condition such as a stroke is well recognized, usually with intensive…

  • Clausewitz’s death: Cholera and melancholy

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain   Carl von Clausewitz. Via Wikimedia. “Sollte mich ein früher Tod in dieser Arbeit unterbrechen” (“If an early death should terminate my work”) — Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege   Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the psychological and political aspects…

  • Robert Bentley Todd

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Todd prize for Clinical Medicine (left). Medal by Joseph Shepherd Wyon, 1861. Science Museum, London, United Kingdom. Via Google Arts & Culture.  Robert Bentley Todd (right). Mezzotint by G. Zobel, 1860, after D. Y. Blakiston. Wellcome Collection. Public domain.  Students of King’s College Hospital London are…

  • Sister Kenny: The forgotten Nightingale

    Anand Raja Devaraj SushamaKerala, India Medical practices flourish and fall out of favor with time. Some become the norm only to turn redundant later; others prevail after a hard battle for acceptance. A campaign is even more arduous when the proponent is outside the establishment. Sister Elizabeth Kenny and her eponymous polio treatment, the “Kenny…

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

    Nicolás Robles Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Hoffmann’s drawing of himself, riding on Tomcat Murr and fighting “Prussian bureaucracy.” From Klaus Günzel: Die deutschen Romantiker. Artemis, Zürich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-1119-1. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Ich bin das, was ich scheine, und scheine das nicht, was ich bin, mir selbst ein unerklärlich Rätsel, bin ich entzweit…

  • The amnesic jokester

    Jason Brandt Baltimore, Maryland, United States   Black-and-white drawing of a man scratching his head, from The Evening Ledger, Philadelphia, May 4 1916. scanned by Open Clip Art Library user Johnny Automatic. Via Wikimedia Bob T. had suffered a stroke. Not the kind of massive, devastating stroke that left him bereft of language (aphasia), or…

  • A Tale of Two Tonics: Sino-Western psychopharmaceutical modernity in Shanghai, 1936

    Richard Zhang Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   Advertisement for Sanatogen in the Shen Bao, October 25, 1936.  Source (accessed through Yale University).  Shanghai, 1936: Positioned at the Yangtze Delta, this sprawling, bustling seaport was a multiplicity of cities. It was China’s most lucrative commercial hub for many business elites; a lavish, cosmopolitan adopted home for expatriates from at…

  • The sweetest gift

    Subramoniam Rangaswami Karnataka, India   Viswan and his father with the gift, image courtesy of author It was the mid-1970s. We were busy packing our portmanteaus and bags in preparation for leaving our campus residence in Calicut Medical College in Kerala1 where I had been working as an assistant professor of orthopedics. I thought I…

  • Locked-in syndrome: Inside the cocoon

    Anika Khan Karachi, Pakistan “…what will you carry back from this field trip into my endless solitude?” From The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997) Jean-Dominique Bauby “dictating” the passages of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly that he had earlier revised in his head. Photograph by Jeanloup Sieff. In December 1995,…

  • New life

    Hannah Joyner Takoma Park, Maryland, United States    Photography by dierk schaefer At first I thought I had a sinus infection, expecting to come home with a course of antibiotics. The doctor initially agreed, but when he heard my account of facial numbness spreading around my left eye, he referred me immediately to a neurologist,…