Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2018

  • The painter and the potter: voices in color and texture

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Drawn to this painting of a vase at the edge of a table, I pause and think, “Don’t we all live on the edges of life, on stratums of the precarious and uncertain?” Jimmy Lueders’ Armand’s Pot II projects from the wall on which it hangs at the Woodmere Art…

  • Haunting poetic characteristics: the dissection scene from Doctor Zhivago

    Timo HannuHelsinki, Finland Doctor Zhivago, a novel by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak, tells the story of physician-poet Yura Zhivago during the turmoil of the first decades of the twentieth century in Russia. The character of Dr. Zhivago is portrayed as follows:1 “Though he was greatly drawn to art and history, he scarcely hesitated over…

  • Aspects of distancing

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece I will call him Bill. We had been unaware of each other’s existence until we first met as elected members of a professional committee in our local medical association. In this capacity we had been working together for several years, convening every two or three months depending on the current agenda. Different…

  • George Gordon Lord Byron and his limp

    JMS Pearce Few would dispute that Lord Byron (Fig 1) was both a poetic prodigy and a flamboyant rogue. George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824), was born on 22 January 1788 at Holles Street, London, son of Captain John (“Mad Jack”) Byron and his second wife, Catherine, née Gordon. John Byron was a libertine,…

  • The history of diabetes and insulin

    Anabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, Netherlands The discovery of insulin in 1921 by Banting, Best, Collip, and McLeod was heralded as the cure of diabetes (Figure 1). Press reports consigned earlier research to oblivion, suggesting that previous investigators had merely been groping in the dark. And yet this revolutionary discovery was preceded by legions of key figures…

  • “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I

    Alice MacNeillOxford, United Kingdom Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?Ever from their hair and through their hand palmsMisery swelters.…

  • Consultation

    Edgar MillerBaltimore, Maryland, USA Rounds In the round The pale orange Cloud-like couches Filled with suits and ties And men Who sit in reserve Awaiting an opening to offer an opinion To rehash the old, Assure the current, Or, dialog the future, Uncertain course to take, for a progressive and unrelenting disease that in the…

  • Upon viewing Félix Vallotton’s La Malade

    Lois LeveenPortland, Oregon, United States The sick girl turns her back to meThe maid won’t meet my eyeThe near-bare walls hold one dim printThe chair sits crookedly The medicines are kept bedsideThe table can expandThat’s how we all know what’s unsaid—More medicines to come And yet the shock of salmon redCalls from the drab and…

  • Enough

    Laura LoertscherPortland, Oregon, United States The last food you ever ate was a cup of orange sherbet from the nurses’ station. I saw no reason to make you NPO. After all, you were eating for two. Did you know this would be your last meal? You came to the hospital on a late Friday afternoon,…

  • Consider the nails of the hand, how they grow (William Bean)

    In the days when the Archives of Internal Medicine was one of the greatest general medicals journal in America, William Bean was its famed editor. Born in 1909 in Manila, he had studied at the University of Charlottesville in Virginia, served in World War II, became professor of medicine in Iowa city, and during his…