Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2017

  • Medicine’s old-school technology

    Katie Taylor San Francisco, CA   I am six months into my first year of residency as a doctor. And my experience so far has been sorrowfully screen-dominated. If aliens were to come down and observe a day in the life, I am afraid they’d assume the computer is the patient and the patient’s room…

  • Using bacteria in cancer therapy

    Andy Tay Los Angeles, California, United States   Image of Lloyd Old, who is regarded as ‘The Father of Modern Tumor Immunology’, taken in 1995. He passed away on November 28, 2011 after a long battle with prostate cancer at the age of 78 years-old. Cancer Research Institute Cancer is a complex disease whose various…

  • Designer babies: Boon or bane?

    Hanashu DurganauduSelangor, Malaysia Would the implementation of ‘designer babies’ be a boon to humans? First and foremost, it helps to detect known genetic abnormalities and chromosomal diseases at an early stage. This would be particularly helpful for couples or individuals who possess a high risk of passing down disadvantageous genes for conditions such as cystic fibrosis…

  • Sunday Sally Rose

    Matthew Kinsella Browns Mills, New Jersey, United States   Rose symbolism on gravestone, submitted by author As the new triage nurse on  the City Department Of Homeless Services Street Outreach Team, I could observe at first, orient, get my bearings. Well acquainted with the stark reality of life on the street, my three interdisciplinary teammates…

  • Dead people healing alcoholism

    Maria BarnaSibiu, Romania In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many villages in the Moldavia region of Romania where doctors hardly ever came. When people became ill they found hope in prayers or in the secret knowledge of initiated women. Thus the treatment of alcoholism was based on empirical and magical medicine.…

  • Thomas Hodgkin: the limits of idealism

    Kirtan Nautiyal Houston, Texas, United States   Thomas Hodgkin Thomas Hodgkin was born in 1798 into a middle class Quaker family then residing in Pentonville, a village north of London. His father was a private tutor and Hodgkin’s early education was also conducted at home, balancing instruction in the Quaker tenets of simplicity and social…

  • The Friends’ Ambulance Unit South Bank Clinic: the forgotten valor of the pacifists who stayed beyond the fight

    Christopher Magoon Philadelphia, PA, USA   FAU volunteer labels unit truck Unit leader, Jack Jones, sketches scene of locals in common room For many of the non-Chinese volunteers who aided China during the tumult of the 1930s and 40s, a notoriety that borders on mythology remains to this day. Perhaps most famously, an American group…

  • Mozart’s “effect” on us: A review of an aspect of music and cognition

    Vincent de LuiseNew Haven, Connecticut, United States For decades, neuroscientists have explored whether there exists a causal relationship between listening to music and enhancement of cognitive ability. Does music make one smarter? Can listening to music lead to more memory and greater intellect? Does listening specifically to the music of Wolfgang Mozart improve cognitive ability?…

  • Sir Roderick Glossop: Wodehouse’s “eminent loony doctor”

    Paul Dakin North London, UK   Sir Roderick Glossop (right) and J Washburn Stoker appear in court following Jeeves’ intervention P.G. Wodehouse is one of the greatest comic authors of the twentieth century. He wrote nearly a hundred books containing a fascinating array of characters. Many inhabited the confined geography of 1920’s London and country…

  • Love, cancer, and the caregiver’s faith of C.S. Lewis

    Joshua Niforatos Cleveland, Ohio, United States   Author C.S. Lewis wears a bathrobe in his house. Photo by © Norman Parkinson Poi se torno all’ eternal fontana. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XXXI   C.S. Lewis, the medieval and Renaissance scholar of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, wrote prolifically on myriad topics and won international recognition early in…