Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sigmund Freud

  • Rejuvenation: “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Ch’ io sono quell gran medicoDottore eanciclpedico,Chiamato Dulcamara,. . . Rigiovnir bramate? I’m noted as a scientist,Practitioner and specialist.I’m Doctor Dulcamara…Would you like your youth recaptured? L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), music by Geatano Donizetti, Libretto by Felice Romano, Act I, scene IV1 “Rejuvenation” through medical science is the…

  • “Modern psychiatry begins with Kraepelin”

    JMS PearceHull, England “Modern psychiatry begins with Kraepelin”1 The pages of history seen through the retrospectroscope often provide dull facts rather than insights into the personalities and driving forces of its famous subjects. Such is the case of Emil Wilhelm Kraepelin (1856-1926) (Fig 1), a German psychiatrist, widely acknowledged as the founder and pioneer of…

  • Carl Gustav Jung

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension, but the snow-capped peaks of his beloved Alps soothed him…

  • How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny

    JMS PearceHull, England In March 1933 while visiting Vienna, William Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics, learned that Hitler had just decreed it illegal for “non-Aryan,” mostly Jewish people to hold posts in the Civil Service. Many lawyers, doctors, and academics were deemed “undesirable” and dismissed instantly. Nazi concentration camps, mass desecration, medical…

  • Mahler’s endocarditis and broken heart

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States Gustave Mahler (1860–1911) suffered from personal setbacks throughout his life. Despite receiving more acclaim in early 1900, the death of his daughter Maria from scarlet fever and diphtheria affected him deeply.1 During the same year, Mahler received a vague diagnosis of a “defective heart,” which was later confirmed by the Viennese cardiologist…

  • Neurologica – Disorders of the dream world

    Shameemah AbrahamsCape Town The human mind, so capable of creating works of genius like the orchestral sounds of Beethoven’s symphonies, da Vinci’s enigmatic artwork, or the majestic pyramids of Giza, can easily lose itself and spiral into the chaotic tragedy of dementia. Various forms of “frailties” of the mind have been seen in the artistically…

  • Problems with medical records

    George Dunea When Lawrence Weed first unveiled his vision for reforming medical record documentation, he unleashed a revolution that captivated the imagination of the medical public but may also have brought about unintended consequences from which we suffer even today. Dr. Weed first published his new method in 1967.1 A few years later, in 1972,…

  • Honorio Delgado: A Latin-American psychiatrist, citizen of the world

    Renato AlarcónLima, Perú A sad fact in the history of medicine has been the benign neglect dealt to psychiatry by the rest of the profession. This has been even more painful within psychiatry itself, as its predominantly European and North American quarters practically ignored contributions from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. That is why the…