Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Religion

  • Faith in medicine

    Tyler Beauchamp Augusta, Georgia, United States    Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash. When I was in college, I worked for a nursing unit in the trauma ward. One patient had been in a horrible car accident and barely survived. I visited her for the better part of two weeks before she began to improve.…

  • William Blake

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.   William Blake (1757–1827) (Fig 1) was and still is an enigma. He was born on November 28, 1757, one of seven children to James, a hosier, and Catherine Wright Blake at 28 Broad Street in London.1 He once remarked: “Thank God…

  • Arthur Bispo do Rosário: creation in psychosis

    Rebecca Grossman-Kahn Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States   Untitled, Arthur Bispo do Rosario. Personal photo August 12, 2018. Museu de Arte Moderna de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Exhibit: A Tale of Two Worlds, July 12, 2018- October 14, 2018 In a sprawling, cavernous art museum in Buenos Aires, I turned a corner and my eye caught on what…

  • Improving health and saving lives: the unusual relationship of religion on sports and health

    Ira D. Glick Danielle Kamis Stanford, California, United States Neil Eisenberg San Francisco, California, United States   With permission of the Int Society of Sport Psychiatry Religion has always had a powerful effect on culture. As such, it is surprising that there has been scant literature on the effect of religious beliefs and teachings on…

  • What’s Inside Us?: socio-cultural themes in anatomical naming

    Frazer A. Tessema Chicago, Illinois, United States   Drawing by Stratton Tolmie — MD Candidate at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Anatomical terms often read as Latin or Greek gibberish whose main purpose is to be obscure trivia in the first-year medical school ritual called anatomy class. But a surprising trend emerges…

  • Spirituality in medicine

    Gautam Sen Kolkata, India   Doctor-patient bonhomie is beneficial for both. Photo by Thirdman on Pexels. Imagine a hospitalized patient in the advanced stages of a difficult disease. He wonders whether he will survive and, if he does, in what state he will spend the remainder of his life. Alone in bed, he sometimes finds…

  • Carl Gustav Jung

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Carl Jung. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Creative Commons. In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension,…

  • Science versus religion: the medieval disenchantment

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. An engraving showing a monopod or sclapod, a female Cyclops, conjoined twins, a blemmye, and a cynocephali. By Sebastian Münster 1544. Source History is a novel whose author is the people. -Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)   In medieval times, knowledge, beliefs, and faith were largely centered upon a…

  • The big question

    Monica Maalouf Chicago, Illinois, USA   Open Heart, painting by Monica Maalouf “Doctor, why are we here?” I had just finished answering her questions about her insulin dosing and was crouched down, examining her foot rash, when I looked up at Mrs. Syed, feebly trying to mask my annoyance. “Well, these are just the rooms…

  • Intersection of faith and science in Garcia-Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons

    Sualeha Shekhani Karachi, Pakistan   St. Benedict Exorcising a Demon. Simone Cantarini. c. 1630s. Philadelphia Museum of Art. “If the swords of past conflicts are beaten into plowshares, and if taboos regarding the discussion of religion can be overcome, both medicine and religion can learn constructively from each other.”1 The opposition of reason and religion…