Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: S.E.S. Medina

  • AIDS: Thru a glass darkly

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States I sat in the deep, cool shade of a stout, leafy Texas cedar escaping the torrid summer heat, idle thoughts meandering. Cotton-ball clouds grazed lazily across their azure prairie. The pervasive insane miasma swirling like a whirlwind around COVID-19 reminded me of days past when a very different virus dominated…

  • Was Moses an alchemist?

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States “And he took the (golden) calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.” -Exodus 32:20. In the event depicted above, Moses had just returned with the Ten…

  • COVID-19: clinico-immunologic snapshot of a coronavirus

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States A tiny mote of moisture, buoyed by silk-soft wind currents, is kicked and coaxed along a random path in space. The droplet carries a microscopic stowaway; a translucent, spherical, protein-encased, fatty bubble filled with the ostensibly lifeless essence of COVID-19, the virus known as SARS-CoV-2. Anonymous among the swirling detritus…

  • The Philosophers’ Stone: History and myth

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States “Of all Elixirs, Gold is supreme and the most important for us . . . gold can keep the body indestructible . . . Drinkable gold will cure all illnesses, it renews and restores.”—Paracelsus (1493–1541 AD) – Coelum Philosophorum1 “The universal medicine which cures all human and metallic diseases is…

  • Danse of the virus

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States It is born with tens of thousands of identical brothers and sisters when the thin-walled, transparent, fatty bubble of their nurturing womb suddenly bursts—releasing them into the tumultuary rapids of the host’s bloodstream. It possesses no sense of self, no manner of consciousness—even in the most rudimentary way. It lacks…