Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Paris

  • Animality revisited in times of the coronavirus: A fable

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Imagine, as painters have done, representatives of animal species congregated in an assembly (Fig. 1). A man comes to address this motley crowd in this way: “You guys [he purposefully adopts this condescending language] have recently wronged us. Let me start by reminding you that you did not discover fire;…

  • A sporting end to Henry II, King of France

    Julius P. BonelloAdam AwwadPeoria, Illinois, United States Since the first wheel rolled out of the mouth of a cave, sports have been a staple in our social fabric. From throwing balls to picking up sticks, from tug-of-war to wrestling, from chess to football, and from horse racing to car racing, sporting events have united humans.…

  • Humanitarian for all: The life of Henry Dunant

    Stephen KosnarLima, Peru In his late thirties and bankrupt, Henry Dunant lived in abject poverty, on occasion being forced to eat bread crusts and sleep outdoors in Paris. It is a bitter slice of one man’s history, particularly given that only a few years earlier he had founded the International Committee of the Red Cross.1…

  • The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent

    Mawuli Tettey Ghana The Red Cross Society is a worldwide humanitarian and volunteer-based organization that protects human life and health by rendering assistance to anyone who may need it. In 1862, a Swiss man named Jean-Henri Dunant published a book titled A Memory of Solferino in which he called for the creation of national relief…

  • Notre Dame and gratitude

    Elizabeth CerceoCamden, New Jersey, United States On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned. This event highlighted the integral nature of art and beauty in our culture. We often take for granted the beauty that surrounds us and stands as a connection to our past. I was in Paris years ago and went…

  • The stethoscope

    Fiona RobertsonScotland, United Kingdom One of the most iconic tools of the medical profession is the stethoscope. Here we see René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec, a French physician, using his prototype monoaural stethoscope. It was a wooden cylinder one inch and a half in diameter, one foot long, and tapered at the end like a funnel. This embryonic…

  • Illuminating addiction: Morphinomania in fin-de-siècle visual culture

    Natalia VieyraPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The etchings of Paul-Albert Besnard constitute a gruesome assemblage of nineteenth-century social ills—graphic depictions of the hard lives of women plagued by sickness, suicides, prostitution, infanticide, and poverty. Amid this collection of unfortunate modern imagery, an unusual etching featuring two fashionable Parisiennes stands out (Fig. 1). Who are these elegant…

  • Journaling – enhancing the arts experience while traveling

    Mary McDermott “The Plight of Nursing” from a collection of poems by Carol Battaglia, a retired nurse practitioner at Loyola Medical Center, concludes: “Sometimes at the end of my shift, I cannot account for all of me. I retrace my steps, in hopes of putting myself back together again.” (Carol Battaglia Murmurs. 1996. p. 33.…

  • Art and healing pilgrimage to France: The art of re-imagining

    Lynda Slimmer I am not an especially creative person. I am a doer; I get things done. I help others channel their creativity into realistic outcomes. However, I am that individual that theologian and ethicist Richard Niebuhr describes as “a poet who creates by taking journeys.” My creative self is most stimulated when a trip…

  • A pilgrim’s poems from the heart

    Joan Callahan I am a daughter, sister, wife, mother, school nurse, colleague, friend and neighbor. My vocation is healing in all dimensions of my life. I care for spirit as well as bodies, knowing that spirit guides and informs how we care for ourselves. Spirit is what guides my path, which is why my spirit…