Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

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

  • Women in medicine

    Women have long faced discrimination, prejudice, and exclusion from formal medical training, despite having served as healers and midwives since antiquity. In ancient Egypt, Merit Ptah was recognized as the first known woman physician in about 2700 BCE. In Greece, owing to societal restrictions, women… Read more

  • Diana Beck, neurosurgery pioneer

    Born in Chester, England, in 1902, Diana Beck attended the University of Oxford and studied medicine at the School of Medicine for Women (later renamed the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine). She graduated in 1925, and, after working as a surgical registrar, took her… Read more

  • Lucius Cornelius Sulla in health and disease (138–78 BCE)

    The transition from democracy to dictatorship and tyranny is never pleasant to behold. Whatever its causes, whatever defects it sets out to remedy, it more often than not leads to blood being spilt and tears being shed. This is exemplified by the story of Cornelius… Read more

  • The Cumberbatch story

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Benedict Cumberbatch is a well-known English actor whose name appears often in the media as Dr. Stephen Strange (an arrogant and self-centered neurosurgeon) or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson. Recently, we heard that the Barbados National Task Force… Read more

  • Epithets, solecisms, and Oslerian hagiography

    Patrick FiddesMelbourne, Australia To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certainIdeals—this alone is worth the struggle.1 On February 22, 1905, Sir William Osler delivered his final address at Johns Hopkins University, in which he said, “I desire no other… Read more

  • The wild Wolf and neurosyphilis

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Von den Bergen sacht hernieder,Weckend die uralten Lieder,Steigt die wunderbare Nacht,Und die Gründe glänzen wieder,Wie du’s oft im Traum gedacht. Gently down from the mountains,Waking the ancient songs,Rises the wonderful night,And the grounds shine again,As you often thought in your dreams. —“Nachtzauber”,… Read more

  • Shingles

    JMS PearceHull, England The physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the second century AD described a painful skin eruption that typically followed a band-like or “girdle-like” pattern, which corresponds to the dermatomal pattern of shingles.1 The Greek word herpein means “to creep,” and zoster (Latin cingulum)… Read more

  • Book review: Florence Nightingale’s Rivals: Nursing Through the Crimea

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Florence Nightingale is best remembered as the founder of modern nursing. She opened her famous nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, in 1860. Her principles of nurse training were based on her experiences in the Crimean War a few years… Read more

  • The mystery of the hoofbeats

    Edward TaborBethesda, Maryland, United States All physicians get phone calls from time to time from friends asking for medical advice. I received one of these calls from a pharmacologist I knew. A few weeks prior, his wife had begun having memory loss and difficulty walking.… Read more

  • Witch trials: The intersection of midwifery and gendered persecution

    Lara SheehanCork, Ireland Oppressionist behavior towards women was seen during the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, where the illogical execution of thousands of innocent women occurred.1 Midwives were among these executed women for the role they played in being with and caring… Read more

  • Hulusi Behçet (1889–1948)

    Umut AkovaAtlanta, Georgia, United States Hulusi Behçet is remembered for describing the rare disease that now bears his name. Born on February 20, 1889, in Istanbul, he moved to Damascus at a young age. He attended a French-speaking elementary school, learning French, Latin, and German.… Read more

  • Soap and bathing in ancient and modern times

    Humans have used soap since time immemorial. Yet bathing was not always a high priority, not even at the elegant court of Louis XIV, where noblemen relied largely on using perfume. “I am coming home, do not wash,” wrote Napoleon to his wife Josephine, concerned… Read more