Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Rochester

  • Lebanon during the catastrophe

    Najat Fadlallah Beirut, Lebanon Julian Maamari Rochester, Minnesota, United States Abeer Hani Beirut, Lebanon   Hope in the catastrophe. Drawing by Najat Fadlallah. After several chaotic cycles of resuscitation attempts, the twenty-something-year-old woman was pronounced dead. This was less than half an hour after a massive blast shook the heart of Beirut, Lebanon on the…

  • “Am not I a fly like thee?” Drosophila melanogaster and the human genome

    Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   A fruit fly displaying its large red eye. Among Thomas Hunt Morgan’s many contribution to the burgeoning science of genetics, he observed some male fruit flies had a mutant white eye. By cross-breeding males with mutant white eyes with females with the dominant trait and, subsequently,…

  • Eye-brain-extremity coordination and enduring sports achievement

    Marshall Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   Rafael Nadal. Photo by Carine06. 2016. Via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0 Neuroscientists have imaged the brain of athletes, looking for changes related to the sports they played, whether principally aerobic or anaerobic. These efforts have suggested expansion of the gray matter in certain anatomical areas of the…

  • Maria Callas—her inner voice revealed

    Eelco Wijdicks Lea Dacy Rochester, Minnesota, United States   Cover: Prima Donna: The Psychology of Maria Callas. In Prima Donna: The Psychology of Maria Callas, Paul Wink convincingly concludes—based on largely secondary sources—that Maria Callas was not only a wildly ambitious operator who was not known for an emollient manner, but a prime example of…

  • Doris Unland: Surgical nurse extraordinaire

    Frederic Grannis Duarte, California, United States Doris Unland RN “scrubbed in” OR 10. Doris Unland was an extraordinary American surgical nurse who worked for forty-seven years at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. She may have participated in more major surgical operations than any other person—physician or nurse—in history. Born on December 19, 1910, she…

  • Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain

    Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…

  • The smartest vampire story

    Alice TheibaultRochester, New York, United States There is something uniquely terrifying about vampires. The concept of a nocturnal creature showing up at one’s home to suck their blood is enough to make just about anyone uneasy, and so vampires have been mined as a horror device for generations. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is arguably the…