Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

  • The rise and fall of railway spine

    Lenny GrantSyracuse, New York, United States By 1864, British railways were responsible for 36 deaths and 700 injuries annually.1,2 Yet the most perplexing cases were not the visibly wounded, but those passengers who walked away apparently unharmed, only to develop debilitating symptoms days or weeks later. These survivors experienced what the Lancet described as “disturbed and diminished…

  • Herbert William Page and the railway spine controversy

    Jonathan DavidsonDurham, North Carolina, United States The first passenger railway journey resulted in the death of a prominent British politician.1 During the 1830s and 1840s,2 railway travel became a popular means of transport in Victorian Britain. By the 1850s, it was clear that this revolutionary advance in transportation also caused many injuries that resulted in…

  • Quincy—A crusading doctor played by a crusading actor

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The television series Quincy, or Quincy, M.E. [Medical examiner], aired between 1976 and 1983 in the US. One hundred forty-six episodes of this program were televised. Quincy was originally conceived as a crime drama, with the police helped by the ideas and findings of Dr. Quincy (no first name), a forensic pathologist…

  • William Halse Rivers Rivers

    JMS PearceHull, England William Rivers MD FRCP FRS (1864-1922) William Rivers (Fig 1) was a most unusual man, a polymath with careers in neuroscience, ethnology, and psychology. But above all—notwithstanding or perhaps because of personal nervous constraints—he was a man of originality and great humanity. Son of a churchman, he was born in Luton, near…

  • Prisoners on leave: Vietnam veterans and the Golden Age Western

    Edward Harvey Missoula, Montana, United States “I think we all died a little in that damn war.”—The Outlaw Josey Wales “So…what have you been up to?” When screening combat Vietnam veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder, I will often ask them about their hobbies or interests, since PTSD often manifests as an inability to find pleasure in…

  • Red Cross targets emotional impact of climate change

    Sharon CohenNewtown, Connecticut, United States Natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity worldwide. Mother Nature demonstrated her devastating fury in over 300 global events of intense wind, rain, floods, and fire in 2019, and the 2020s should see more of the same. Other issues, such as excessive heat and drought, are causing diminished availability…

  • The psychological impact of facial injury in the First World War: Outcomes from the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup

    Andrew BamjiRye, East Sussex, UK Modern warfare, and in particular the use of artillery employed against entrenched troops in the First World War, resulted in a large number of facial wounds in all armies. Surgeons were unprepared. Advances in the management of infection and surgical shock resulted in better survival from wounds that would previously…

  • Climate trauma in Monique Roffey’s Archipelago

    Lucille MiaoNew Jersey, United States In recent years, the idea of ecological catastrophe has captured the artistic imagination and infiltrated popular culture through novels such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife and television series like teen drama The 100 (2014–). These stories often tell of a post-apocalyptic future in which human-induced climate change has devastated…

  • “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I

    Alice MacNeillOxford, United Kingdom Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?Ever from their hair and through their hand palmsMisery swelters.…

  • Healing in post-genocide Rwanda

    Vigneshwar SubramanianNivetha SubramanianCleveland, Ohio, United States In April 1994, one of the largest genocides since the Holocaust erupted in Rwanda as the Hutu ethnic majority conducted a targeted slaughter of the Tutsi people.1 In a span of just over 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed.2 Infectious diseases such as HIV ran rampant, a consequence…