Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

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

  • The physician’s guide to The Garden of Earthly Delights

    Nora Fisher-CampbellPortland, Oregon, United States I have returned repeatedly to The Garden of Earthly Delights as a strange and fascinating representation of the human experience. The triptych, painted in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century by Hieronymus Bosch, depicts a fever-dream vision of Eden,… Read more

  • Book review: The Story of the Brain in 10 1/2 Cells

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The brain is arguably the most complex organ in the human body, containing more than 100 billion neurons. In this new book, neuroscientist Richard Wingate sets out to describe different types of brain cells, weaving together neuroscience with stories of… Read more

  • Walter Charleton (1619–1707)

    Walter Charleton was primarily a polymath but also a distinguished medical man. He read widely; wrote on religion, physics, physiology, psychology, geology, zoology, and botany; and is the listed author of thirty printed books and four manuscripts.1 One of his biographers mentions, without further comment,… Read more

  • Body Scan 2023

    Dome WittCalgary, Alberta, Canada After being injured in a collision, the artist took to exploring the experience through a series of paintings. A CT scan taken before the repairing of the artist’s hip serves as the base of one of these paintings, entitled Body Scan… Read more

  • Pierre Fauchard (1678–1761), dentistry’s founding father

    Brody FoglemanCristin GrantHarsh JhaNoel BrownleeSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States Dr. Pierre Fauchard was a French surgeon and dentist who worked in Paris.1 He is widely accepted as the father of dentistry because of his many important contributions to the discipline and is particularly well-known for… Read more

  • Mrs. Dalloway and shell shock

    Cristóbal S. Berry-CabánFort Liberty, North Carolina, United States The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I surpassed those of previous conflicts, as some 8.5 million soldiers died from wounds or disease.1,2 Artillery caused most of the casualties, followed by small arms and poison… Read more

  • From poppy to morphine and heroin

    JMS PearceHull, England Among the remedies which it has pleased almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.—Thomas Sydenham, 1680 The controversial pharmaceutical company Farbenfabriken Bayer AG* had an important role in the development… Read more

  • The Medical Inkling: R.E. Havard, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien

    Sarah O’DellIrvine, California, United States In a smoky back corner of an Oxford pub and the book-filled rooms of Magdalen College, the celebrated writing group known as the “Inklings” gathered, debated, and laughed throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Their literary impact has been tremendous, in part… Read more

  • Memento mori in medicine

    Stephanie JiangToronto, Ontario, Canada It is easy to believe that humankind’s greatest fear is death. From our humble beginnings to now modern-day society, we have learned that Death will always chase us. Few professions explore our mortality so candidly; in most Western occupations, death is… Read more

  • Psychopathological aspects of the war in Ukraine

    Sergei JarginMoscow, Russia Paranoid leaders can remain in positions of great power in nations that lack appropriate checks and balances.1 This is particularly likely in one-party states where mass intimidation and imposed homogeneity of thinking prevail and where everyone conforms with the ruling party. Grave… Read more

  • Haff disease: We don’t know all of it

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It was an unbelievably sad thing to watch. Strong men being carried from their fishing boats to their homes—completely stiff and utterly helpless.”– Witness to 1924 disease outbreak In the history of medicine there are examples of diseases “rising and falling.” They… Read more

  • John Huxham (1694–1768)

    To be remembered for almost 300 years after practicing medicine in an English provincial town is no mean feat. This is particularly so considering that John Huxham made no significant advances in medicine other than describing the epidemics affecting his hometown and for supposedly introducing… Read more