Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

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

  • Passing sentence 

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece  The man facing me across the desk is outwardly calm. He gives an innocent enough history of a vague pain in his back which eventually led his family physician to send him for a chest film. Something did not look right, and… Read more

  • Exploring capacity, consent, and confinement: A humanities-based approach

    Deema al YousufKathryn CobainShagun MisraDavid JeffreyWorcester, United Kingdom Background The UK’s Mental Capacity Act (2005) stresses the importance of patient involvement in the process of informed consent through shared decision-making.1 A workshop was held for forty-one first-year graduate medical students to raise their awareness of… Read more

  • Mileva Maric-Einstein

    Mirjana Stojković-IvkovićBelgrade, Serbia Mileva Marić was the first wife of Albert Einstein. Although she worked with him for many years, her overall contribution to his success has never been clearly determined. She was born in Serbia in 1875 and had one leg shorter than the… Read more

  • The history of the C-section

    Julius BonelloAjoke IrominiPeoria, Illinois, United States A procedure that removes a live fetus through an abdominal incision in a pregnant woman is known as a Cesarean section or C-section. Its original intention was to remove a dead baby from a dying or dead mother. Therefore,… Read more

  • Holden Caulfield’s coughing conundrum: A medical perspective

    Anthony GulottaBethesda, Maryland, United States J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, captivates readers with the story of Holden Caulfield, a disillusioned teenager. Was Holden’s constant coughing due to pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), as he claims, or some other illness? His own words paint… Read more

  • Managing loss and emotional turmoil through poetry

    Maria ShopovaDublin, Ireland Loss is a universal human experience that spans borders and cultures. Patients, facing death, may struggle with existential questions and anxiety due to the loss of health. Families bear the agony of watching a loved one deteriorate and die, and then enter… Read more

  • Ship fever: A malignant disease of a most dangerous kind?

    Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia During the Age of Sail, “road,” “workhouse,” “hospital,” “army,” “camp,” “emigrant,” “jail”/“gaol,” and “ship” were routine noun adjuncts pertaining to the deadly fevers frequently occurring in overcrowded spaces in cold weather. Although “fever” diagnoses were common, most such instances in ships’… Read more

  • Book review: Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A nation that produced Goethe could not possibly go to the bad.”– Sigmund Freud, 1930 In March 1938, Austria became part of the Greater German Reich. Nazi antisemitism and the exclusion of Jews from society began at once. Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939),… Read more

  • Robert Remak remembered

    JMS PearceHull, England This article is based in part on an older publication, Lancet 1996.2 The name of Robert Remak (1815–1865) is linked eponymously to several neurological observations. They include Remak’s band, Remak’s fibers, and Remak’s ganglion.1 His father was a cigar merchant, in a… Read more

  • The discovery of urea and the end of vitalism

    Mostafa ElbabaDoha, Qatar In history, ancient chemistry is known as “alchemy.” It is different than modern chemistry since it was mixed with philosophy and pseudoscience, although it is considered a protoscience. Alchemy failed to explain the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by experimentation… Read more

  • The ones who stay in Omelas

    Jackson MartinLubbock, Texas, United States Ursula K. Le Guin describes a paradoxical and provocative utopian city in her short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The story reads as a parable, differing from an analogy or metaphor in that it intends to provoke… Read more

  • Decoding the death of Maharaja Pandu

    B. Sadananda NaikKarnataka, India The Mahabharata is one of two great ancient Indian Sanskrit epics of Hinduism. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War, the Kaurava and Pandava princes. Maharaja Pandu, father of Pandavas, is one of the key… Read more