Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Politics

  • Psychopathological aspects of the war in Ukraine

    Sergei JarginMoscow, Russia Paranoid leaders can remain in positions of great power in nations that lack appropriate checks and balances.1 This is particularly likely in one-party states where mass intimidation and imposed homogeneity of thinking prevail and where everyone conforms with the ruling party. Grave consequences can occur when paranoid and delusional ideas coexist in…

  • “The trial” of Dr. Spock

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.”1— Rudolf Virchow, M.D. (1821-1902) “It took me until my sixties to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics.”2— Benjamin Spock, M.D. Benjamin McLane Spock (1903-1998) was an American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child…

  • A brief history of menstruation

    Fangzhou LuoPortland, Oregon, United States After a few failed attempts to redirect a flirtatious student to “higher pleasures” like music, the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Hypatia resorted to revealing where she was in her menstrual cycle to deter him. The philosopher who recorded this—Damascius—does not specify if this student was Orestes,1 who remained a…

  • Review of Fracture: Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The lives of people who seem to be endowed with extraordinary abilities have long been a source of fascination. The famous Italian physician, researcher, and founder of the science of criminology, Cesare Lombroso, professed this interest in his 1889 book The Man of Genius, stating that genius was a form…

  • The Plague and physician burnout

    Geoffrey RubinMark AbramsD. Edmund AnsteyNew York, New York, United States In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague,1 Doctor Rieux is a consummate physician, a hero and a “true healer.” His main charge is to compassionately perform his duty—a matter, in his words, of “common decency”—despite the personal risk of infection and death. Rieux embodies the Oslerian…

  • When I heard the learn’d epidemiologist

    Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, United States Sitting on the maroon recliner in my den, I am having trouble concentrating on the epidemiologist who is talking on the television. He points to a Covid hot zone on a color-coded map of the United States. The screen changes before I can locate Virginia. Were we brown, or yellow?…

  • The death of Zachary Taylor: The first presidential assassination or a bad bowl of cherries?

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States Zachary Taylor was a true Southerner born into a prominent family of plantation owners in Orange County, Virginia, on November 24, 1784, During his childhood his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky. In 1808 he obtained a commission as a first lieutenant in the army. In 1810 he married Margaret…

  • A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international scientific cooperation seems to be the order of the day, it is heartening to recall that during the height of Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States, collaboration between an American virologist and his Russian counterparts…

  • Plagues and prejudice

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States It was a calm, clear January morning on the gritty streets of paradise. Honolulu, the capital of the newly-annexed U.S. territory of Hawaii, was ushering out a century of upheaval that had included the arrival of explorers, missionaries, and deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles; the overthrow of…

  • Political obfuscation and medical speculation

    Charles G. KelsSan Antonio, Texas, United States Politicians have long endeavored to keep their health concerns secret. In US presidential politics, the efforts of both incumbents and candidates to project vitality and minimize frailty have at times bordered on the surreal. In 1893, President Grover Cleveland underwent surgery for oral cancer on a private yacht…