Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: rocky face

  • In memoriam: James Parkinson

    JMS PearceHull, England The 21st of December 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Dr James Parkinson (1755–1824), author of An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. He was buried in St. Leonard’s church where a marble plaque elegantly summarising his life and work… Read more

  • Book review: X-ray

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England X-ray by Nicole Lobdell is the latest in the Bloomsbury Collection series “Object Lessons,” which examines the hidden and unexplored aspects of ordinary things that have become a part of modern life. X-rays have long been a source of fascination, not… Read more

  • Aequanimitas

    JMS PearceHull, England Amongst many books and essays devoted to the ideology and practice of medicine in its widest sense, William Osler’s Aequanimitas1 stands out as a classic. Influenced by Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, published in 1686, Osler’s Aequanimitas with Other Addresses to Medical… Read more

  • Pietro Grimani: Venetian Doge and Fellow of the Royal Society (1667–1752)

    Pietro Grimani was one the most cultured of the 120 Doges who served as chief magistrates and leaders of the city and republic of Venice for more than one thousand years. Born into an ancient aristocratic family that had held essential positions in Venetian society,… Read more

  • Reminiscences of a medical student in Australia

    Some years ago a tourist shown the shopping Galleria in Milan asked the guide why the ceiling paintings illustrating the world’s continents did not include Australia. The guide explained that Australia had yet to be invented. She was clearly misinformed in that the British had… Read more

  • Whose name is writ in water: Life, serendipity, and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva

    Carol Zapata-WhelanFresno, California, United States “… I guess [the grass] is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass I sank down… Read more

  • The Turk’s Head Literary Club

    Elizabeth SteinhartJMS PearceHull, England We share a fascination for the varied activities, relics, and quirky names of eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries’ gentlemen’s clubs and societies. One of us (ES) recently found the blue plaque of the Turk’s Head Literary Club above a Chinese supermarket in London’s… Read more

  • Paul Farmer, MD (1959–2022)

    Paul Edward Farmer was an American medical pioneer anthropologist, academician, and physician. He co-founded and was chief strategist of Partners in Health (PIH), an international nonprofit organization that since 1987 has provided health care services, undertaken research, and advocacy on behalf of the poor and… Read more

  • The Art of Medicine is the essence of medical professionalism

    Patrick FiddesAustralia The art consists in three things—the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art.1 Among the 412 aphorisms in Francis Adam’s Genuine Works Of Hippocrates2 are three that employ the term “Art.” Two have achieved popular acclaim… Read more

  • Margaret Mead (1901–1978), controversial anthropologist pioneer

    Margaret Mead is remembered as one of the most important, though controversial, anthropologists of the twentieth century. She became famous through her classic work Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), in which she described the life and sexual practices of teenagers on two Samoan islands… Read more

  • Faith and symphony: Anton Bruckner’s trials and triumphs

    Michael YafiChaden YafiHouston, Texas, United States Immersed in the music, the young composer conducted the orchestra with such fervor that he scarcely noticed that more than half the audience had slipped away. When the symphony came to its final notes, instead of the applause he… Read more

  • The history of eyeglasses

    Efforts to improve vision date back to the ancient civilizations of India and China. Greek scholars such as Ptolemy and Euclid endeavored to understand the physics of light refraction, the mechanisms of lenses, and how their properties can enhance vision and literacy. The Romans magnified… Read more