Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Soldiers

  • Battle of six feet

    Mark Mosley Wichita, Kansas, United States   Sleep (w/CPAP). Artwork by Howard J on Flickr, October 19, 2020. CC BY-NC 2.0. They die alone now; jet pilots soaring solo upward muffled voices sucked into machines speaking a language we recognize but too distant to quite understand until their plastic faces harden and eyes glaze over…

  • They don’t teach us that

    Evelyn M. Potochny Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States   Soldiers in line to get in a plane. Photo by Pixabay. You called in your own medevac. You’d even tourniqueted both legs, or what was left of them. And when the Chinook kicked up all that dust and finally landed, you looked so—calm. Someone read each name…

  • Pieter Bruegel and The Parable of the Blind

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch.”—Matthew 15:14, King James Version 21st Century The Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (b.ca.1525-d.1569), who lived and worked in Brussels, was considered “the most perfect painter of his century.”1…

  • The sanctity of blood: Jehovah’s Witnesses and bloodless medicine

    Margo A. PeytonBaltimore, Maryland, United States Tammy said that her throat looked like that of a bullfrog croaking on an August night. At her local emergency room, her blood pressure was 240/40 mmHg due to profound aortic valve insufficiency complicated by an aortic aneurysm. Her condition necessitated high-risk cardiac surgery, a procedure that carries the…

  • Medical doctors in the army of India

    Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India   Fig.1. Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India. “The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.” – Thomas Campbell   India, like many other countries, has doctors serving in the army as well as tertiary care hospitals that provide medical services to the armed forces personnel. It also…