Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: plasma

  • They don’t teach us that

    Evelyn M. Potochny Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States   Soldiers in line to get in a plane. Photo by Pixabay. You called in your own medevac. You’d even tourniqueted both legs, or what was left of them. And when the Chinook kicked up all that dust and finally landed, you looked so—calm. Someone read each name…

  • Blood under the moon: the role of astrology in surgery

    Margareta-Erminia Cassani Michigan, United States   Zodiac Man, Homo Signorum, from Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons, c 1486, BL MS Egerton, 2572, f. 50v.  Luminarium:  Encyclopedia Project Imagine your doctor telling you that you need surgery. Then they follow that unsettling news with something, well, a little strange sounding. They tell you that the date…

  • The history and significance of voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation

    Hans Erik HeierOslo, Norway “While we have now begun to understand the cost of everything, we are in danger of losing track of the value of anything” (Ann Oakley and John Ashton, 1993) Volutary, non-remunerated blood donation in catastrophe September 11, 2001: Two passenger airplanes are crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York,…

  • The time between our hands

    Samantha Below Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States   The hospital. Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash Thread passes from the tools in your hands to be pulled by mine. You suture the vessels. I clear the path of knots. Our posture is separated by inches, our hearts by hand-breadths. Our hands are identical in the vibrations…

  • The color of organ markets

    Howsikan Kugathasan Toronto, Ontario, Canada   Dark Room, Single Light: the contrast between black and white markets Nawaraj Pariyar from Nepal is promised thirty thousand dollars for “a piece of meat” that will grow back. Only later does he find out that he was duped twice. He received less than 1% of his promised money…