Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Rachel Conrad Bracken

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    EPIDEMICS Published in March, 2020 H E K T O R A M A   . The recent coronavirus outbreak inevitably brings to mind the Spanish flu, the deadly influenza pandemic of a century ago. Here we republish seven articles about this devastating viral disease that spread to the four corners of the world, killing…

  • “It’s vinegar saved her”: folk medicine, food, and the flu in A Time of Angels

    Rachel Conrad BrackenRootstown, Ohio, USA The publication of Karen Hesse’s young adult novel, A Time of Angels (1997), coincides with a renewed interest in the history of the 1918–1919 “Spanish flu” pandemic and a proliferation of multidisciplinary studies of contagion and culture.1 Yet A Time of Angels is also a novel about food and folk medicine…

  • The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and the diagnostic gaze as moral authority in The Great Gatsby

    Rachel BrackenHouston, Texas, United States The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his…