Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: PhD

  • The proximity of death

    Paul C. RosenblattSt. Paul, Minnesota, United States In September 1951, I was a very sick twelve-year-old, covered with bruises and red dots where blood vessels were leaking. My nose had been bleeding for days and nothing we did stopped it. My blood was not clotting. The morning my mother took me to the University Hospital…

  • Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM, FRS (1910-1994)

    JMS PearceHull, England Dorothy Hodgkin (Fig 1), though not by religion, had close Quaker affinities through her marriage and through her spirited pacifism. She possessed a unique mixture of scientific skills that allowed her to extend the use of X-rays to reveal the structures of compounds, a technical venture far more complex than anything attempted…

  • Synesthesia in medicine and the humanities

    Eleni I. (Lena) ArampatzidouGreece Dr. Arampatzidou would like to dedicate this essay to Professor Alexander Nehamas, Director Dimitri Gondicas and the Stanley Seeger Center at Princeton University for their support and generosity in offering her a research fellowship in medical humanities which made this publication possible. Synesthesia (syn=plus + aesthesis=sensation in Greek) is a term used…

  • A difficult diagnosis: Humor—how we laugh at doctors

    Kate BaggottSt. Catharines, Ontario, Canada “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it,”1 silent film star Charlie Chaplin wrote in his autobiography. Chaplin’s words do not exactly connect the funny bone to the humerus, and the anatomy of comedy has never been easy to chart, especially when it…