Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Review of Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Handbook to the Heart of Medicine

  • Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape

    Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and lips, has breasts, a navel, and pubic hair.… Read more

  • Palo Seco: A leper colony in Panama

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland Park, Kansas The history of leprosy goes back to antiquity and is replete with unscientific prejudices, including the belief that the disease was highly contagious. Therefore, lepers were ostracized from society. It was not until the nineteenth century that Armauer Hansen (1841–1912), a… Read more

  • The adenoid riots of 1906

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden On June 28, 1906, thousands of Eastern European Jewish women surrounded and attacked twelve public schools in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.1 The community where they lived was an “unbearably crowded, unhealthy, and impoverished urban neighborhood.”2 The Danish-American photographer, journalist, and… Read more

  • Faith in medicine

    Tyler BeauchampAugusta, Georgia, United States 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… Read more

  • The Joys of Motherhood: The classic Nigerian novel

    Oyenike IlakaAlbany, New York The Joys of Motherhood is a Nigerian novel written by Buchi Emecheta in 1979. Emecheta was a Nigerian woman from the Igbo tribe. Born in 1944, she spent her childhood in Lagos. At sixteen, she married and immigrated to London, where… Read more

  • Diocles of Carystus

    Diocles of Carystus (probably 375–300 BC), also known as Diocles Medicus, came from the island of Euboea but is remembered as a resident of Athens. He wrote on animal anatomy, dietetics, physiology, embryology, and medical botany, but only fragments of his writings survive. His work… Read more

  • O Child! My Child!

    Alice RanjanRedmond, Washington, USA O Child! My Child!Enter did you, into this world,incarnadine and warm.But when I held you in my arms,you did not shriek or love or scorn.Nay, you took the pathfrom mother’s bloodto River Styxin evanescent breath.How I wish you could have stayed… Read more

  • Wandering lonely as a cloud

    Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, US I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle… Read more

  • Healer of the pharaohs: History’s first woman doctor

    Matthew TurnerWashington, US Some 4500 years ago, as the great pyramids rose above the desert sands of Egypt, there lived a remarkable woman. Her name was Peseshet, and she is humanity’s first known woman physician. Peseshet was known by the title imy-r swnwt, which roughly… Read more

  • Luigi Rolando

    JMS PearceHull, England Likened to the small intestines, in ancient times the gyri of the brain were named “coils” by Greek physicians and anatomists. Vesalius in the sixteenth century amplified the description in the celebrated De humani corporis fabrica. Thomas Willis in Cerebri anatome (1664)… Read more

  • Book review: A History of Women in Medicine and Medical Research

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Research and writing on women’s contributions to science and medicine are needed and welcome. Books about science and medical advances have often concentrated primarily on men’s achievements and have a distinctly Western bias. This new book on the history of women… Read more

  • Romantique

    Jonathan B. FerriniLa Jolla, California, United States “I live in a world of spring showers of acrylic and watercolor droplets painting the score on the pavement of a Chopin nocturne.” These were the last words my brother Marshal spoke to me ten years ago at… Read more