Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: psychosomatic’

  • Under the lime tree: Medicine, poetry, and the education of the senses

    Alan BleakleySennen, West Cornwall, United Kingdom When in the summer of 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s wife Sara accidentally spilled hot milk over his foot, causing serious burns such that Coleridge could not walk, he sat in the garden of his friend Thomas Poole’s house under a lime tree, immobilized. A party of friends, meanwhile, had…

  • Which weighs upon the heart

    Murad KhanKarachi, Pakistan I seldom see patients without an appointment, which for an initial patient can take up to an hour, often longer. Fortunately for this couple, the booked patient rang in to say he could not come because of some transport problem, so I was able to see them. “Doctor saheb- we have come…