Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Russia

  • Sergei Rachmaninoff: The dichotomy of life and music

    Michael YafiChaden YafiHouston, Texas, United States Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), a Russian composer, was known for having very large hands. With a span that covered twelve white keys on the keyboard (the interval of a thirteenth), he could play a left-hand chord of C, E flat, G, C, and G.1 This has led some medical experts…

  • Schizophrenia in Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary

    Janet Ming GuoAtlanta, Georgia, United States Lu Xun’s 狂人日記 (A Madman’s Diary; 1918)1 was inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s Записки сумасшедшего, Zapiski sumasshedshevo (Diary of a Madman; 1835).2 Both works reveal crucial information about schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia, two psychiatric disorders that are often misdiagnosed3 but affect many people worldwide. In 2019 the World Health Organization estimated…

  • The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore

    Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States In 1832, a paper entitled On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen was read to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London by its secretary, as Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) was not yet a member. In it, Hodgkin described the clinical histories and gross postmortem findings of seven…

  • The global journey of variolation

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Humanity has eliminated only one infectious disease—smallpox. Smallpox is a very old disease and efforts to prevent it are almost as old. They included a technique called variolation, also known as inoculation or engrafting, in which individuals were infected with live smallpox virus to produce a milder form of the…

  • Rilke: A poet’s death

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Rose, oh reiner widerspruch, lust,Niemandes schlaf zu sein under soviel lidern Rose, o pure contradiction, desire,to be no one’s sleep beneath so many lids. – Rainer Maria Rilke, epitaph On December 4, 1875, René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (later changed to Rainer Maria Rilke) was born in Prague, the…

  • A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international scientific cooperation seems to be the order of the day, it is heartening to recall that during the height of Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States, collaboration between an American virologist and his Russian counterparts…

  • Mustard: History of the yellow seed

    Carol ShermanChicago, Illinois, United States The National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin1 describes itself as having over 5,600 mustards. They originate from all fifty states of the United States and from more than seventy countries. This museum, casting itself as midcentury, exhibits old curios and vintage signage. The museum also provides a place to sit…

  • Notes from writing a character with a bleeding disorder

    Nicole HebdonBuffalo, New York, United States I have read two books that feature characters with bleeding disorders. The first was a used paperback with a neon green and blue cover, like bowling alley carpet under a black light. I do not remember the title or the author’s name or much of the plot, but I…

  • Gilyarovsky and Gannushkin psychiatric hospitals in Moscow

    Sergei JarginMoscow, Russia The Gilyarovsky and Gannushkin psychiatric hospitals can be discussed together because the latter was founded in 1913 as a branch of the former, becoming a separate institution only in 1931. Both hospitals are located not far from each other, near the Sokolniki Park and Yauza River.1 The Gilyarovsky hospital, founded 1808 (Fig.…

  • Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man

    Philip R. Liebson In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is no known…