Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

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

  • Help from the horseshoe crab

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) has not changed in more than 450 million years. It has been called “a living fossil.”1 It is, in fact, not a crab at all, but an arthropod, more closely related to arachnids such as spiders and… Read more

  • Douglas Argyll Robertson and his pupils

    JMS PearceHull, England In my student days, the Wasserman reaction (WR), though not specific, was performed almost routinely in patients on medical wards to detect syphilis. Several direct and serological tests of varying sensitivity and specificity have now replaced the WR. Since reaching a historic… Read more

  • Farewell, dear pictures that I have loved so well

    For nearly two decades Cardinal Jules Mazarin was the de facto ruler of France and the most powerful person in Europe. Born in Italy in 1602, he worked as a Papal diplomat but offered his services to Cardinal Richelieu and moved to Paris in 1640.… Read more

  • Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov and morphine

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “During the years of war and revolution it was hard to find a hospital without morphine-addicted patients.”1– Vladimir Gorovoy-Shaltan, physician specialist in addiction medicine Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a Russian physician, novelist, and playwright. He earned his medical degree from the… Read more

  • Middle Ages, Middlemarch, and the mid-twentieth century: Idealism at risk

    William MarshallTucson, AZ The dissatisfaction with modern medicine felt by both patients and doctors occurs despite unprecedented advances and successes in disease treatment and prevention. Corporate Medicine (huge healthcare conglomerates that control much of medical care) and Big Pharma (giant research, development, and sales entities)… Read more

  • Book review: The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Classical antiquity has long been a subject of human fascination. The time period covered in this book ranges from around 1000 BCE to 650 CE. The editors have produced an encyclopedic volume of essays from scholars worldwide, resulting in a comprehensive… Read more

  • Wernicke-Korsakoff encephalopathy: A historical note

    JMS PearceHull, England Before Sergei Sergeivich Korsakoff described the psychosis that bears his name, Carl Wernicke reported a closely related and often coexistent syndrome. It is variously named Wernicke-Korsakoff encephalopathy, syndrome, or psychosis. Two more different personalities would be hard to imagine. Wernicke’s encephalopathy The… Read more

  • A celebrated occasion

    Eli EhrenpreisChicago, Illinois, United States She arrives at the office early, looking as if she stepped from a portrait. Her blue eyes glimmer with tears. “My gynecologist has been treating me for hemorrhoids, but the bleeding has been getting worse. It started when I had… Read more

  • “My dear neoplasm”: Sigmund Freud’s oral cancer

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United states When the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, died in London early on the morning of September 23, 1939, he succumbed to what he wryly referred to as “my dear old cancer with which I have been sharing my existence… Read more

  • Please don’t die in the hospital

    Alexandra DeFeliceFalls Church, Virginia, United States I don’t like the way people die in the hospital. I don’t like the color schemes, the paleness that seeps into every empty wall, every window shade, every floor tile; every cafeteria counter, every elevator sign, every parking lot… Read more

  • Rapamycin: The “fountain of youth” from Easter Island?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “We know more about the movement of the celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.”—Leonardo DaVinci In November 1964, the Canadian naval vessel HMCS Cape Scott left Halifax, Nova Scotia, to make a medical evaluation of Easter Island. The expedition was led… Read more

  • Physicians and photosynthesis

    JMS PearceHull, England The importance of plants in nutrition and in the environment of human and animal species needs no emphasis. How plants obtain their food and how they grow were unsolved mysteries until photosynthesis was discovered. It was generally believed that plants obtained food… Read more