Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2019

  • The good shepherd

    Pallavi TatapudySouth Kortright, New York, USA “You have arrived.” The Google Maps navigator tells me I have reached my destination. I look around, doubting if indeed this is the right location. This looks like a vibrant suburban neighborhood with life all around and surely not what I imagined. There is no external sign that a…

  • Dr. Rebecca Cole and racial health disparities in nineteenth-century Philadelphia

    Meg Vigil-FowlerGrand Junction, Colorado From the beginning of black women’s professional involvement in medicine, public health marked a central component of the scope of their practice. Rebecca Cole, the second black woman physician in the United States, began her career as the “sanitary visitor” in the late 1860s for the New York Infirmary for Women…

  • “Surrounded with many Mercies”: 270 years of patient advice

    Andrew WilliamsFrederick O’DellNorthampton, United Kingdom On July 9, 1748 Dr. James Stonhouse, physician at the Northampton Infirmary (United Kingdom), published “A Friendly Letter to a Patient just admitted to an Infirmary.”1 Later that year, after some minor revisions, the text was reprinted as “Friendly Advice to a Patient,” which for the next century and beyond…

  • Robert Liston—the fastest knife in town

    Samuel Johnson, a man of strongly held prejudices, had a low opinion of most foreigners, and this included the Scots. James Boswell, his biographer and a Scotsman himself, records how Johnson patronizingly would declare that the best roads lead from Scotland and that much could be made of a Scotsman “if he be caught young.”…

  • The big sheepdog

    Gregory RoseLexington, Kentucky, United States “How ya doin’, Wayne?” It had been some ten years, back in high school, since I had seen Wayne. I had returned to general practice in my small home town and I was not sure what Wayne had been doing during that time, but when I saw him again, it…

  • Notre Dame and gratitude

    Elizabeth CerceoCamden, New Jersey, United States On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned. This event highlighted the integral nature of art and beauty in our culture. We often take for granted the beauty that surrounds us and stands as a connection to our past. I was in Paris years ago and went…

  • “Let the people see what I’ve seen”: beauty, suffering, and learning to see

    John EberlyRaleigh, North Carolina, United States Charles Stegeman, professor of fine arts at Haverford College, once took up the task of teaching medical students how to draw. He did so because he observed that students who learned to draw well went on to perform better in anatomy.1 They could see better, not just in terms…

  • More than “toil and trouble”: Macbeth and medicine

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States The image of a woman – a witch — working over a bubbling cauldron filled with stomach-turning substances is a staple of both horror and more family friendly media. One such example is Shakespeare’s Macbeth, specifically the “Double, double toil and trouble” speech given by the three witches in Act…

  • The future of medicine

    Hannah WilsonCambridge, Massachusetts, United States “Nobody can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. … Morpheus: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” —Neo (The Matrix, 1999) Tomorrow was louder than I had expected, the…

  • Medicine, musically

    Willem BloisHalifax, Nova Scotia I sat on the piano bench, head down, staring at the space between middle C and the key above it. I could see my teacher out of the corner of my eye, sitting forward in her chair, no longer relaxed nor casually listening to the first movement of a Haydn piano…