Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2020

  • Hölderlin’s madness

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain German poet and philosopher Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born in Lauffen-am-Neckar (Würtemberg) in the year 1770. His father, a pastor and a schoolmaster, died two years later. When he was four years old, his mother moved to Nürtingen and remarried, but his stepfather also died soon after the marriage. In addition…

  • Ophthalmology in Regency era China: A portrait of Thomas Richardson Colledge by George Chinnery

    Stephen MartinThailand Thomas Richardson Colledge (1797-1879) was an ophthalmic surgeon who practiced in Macao, China, for a quarter of a century in the late Regency era. Colledge’s daughter, Frances Mary Martin (1847-1918) wrote a brief biography of him in 1880.1 It is an absorbing and touching account, and important in relation to an extraordinary medical…

  • A Tale of Two Tonics: Sino-Western psychopharmaceutical modernity in Shanghai, 1936

    Richard ZhangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Shanghai, 1936: Positioned at the Yangtze Delta, this sprawling, bustling seaport was a multiplicity of cities. It was China’s most lucrative commercial hub for many business elites; a lavish, cosmopolitan adopted home for expatriates from at least forty-eight different nationalities; and a chaotic urban jungle for prostitutes, gangsters, and slum-dwellers…

  • The Schoolhouse Lab

    Edward McSweeganKingston, Rhode Island, United States “Black measles” was a common name for spotted fever, which regularly killed people in the western United States. Symptoms included a spotty rash on the extremities, fever, chills, headache, and photophobia. No one knew what caused it. The first recorded case in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley was in 1873.1 Twenty-three…

  • Dr. Peabody, the ideal medical practitioner

    Rachel BrightKevin QosjaLiam ButchartStony Brook, New York, United States Art not only imitates nature, but completes its deficiencies.—Aristotle, Physics A common complaint about medical students, doctors, and healthcare providers is that the scientific and technological progress of the last few decades has led them to neglect meaningful interactions, leaving patients bereft of the human touch—with…

  • Covid-19 and the mind: a short play

    Catalina FlorescuHoboken, New Jersey, United States Characters: LOLA, late 40’s TORA, mid 40’s Setting: Two apartments in NYC. Imagine the dialogue happening in two balconies or, for a more absurd take, the same apartment divided by French doors. Time: During the historic plague of 2020. Notes on acting: These women are neighbors. They are also…

  • A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international scientific cooperation seems to be the order of the day, it is heartening to recall that during the height of Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States, collaboration between an American virologist and his Russian counterparts…

  • Joseph Merrick, “The Elephant Man”

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom As a specimen of humanity, Merrick was ignoble and repulsive; but the spirit of Merrick, if it can be seen in the form of the living, would assume the figure of an upstanding and heroic man . . .6 The life of Joseph Merrick, also known as “the Elephant Man,”…

  • Regalia

    Nancy L. HagoodCharleston, South Carolina, United States My medical school graduation regalia has hung in my closet for two years. It will never be worn. In spring 2019, I was a fourth-year medical student, planning to graduate in May and move 500 miles north to work as an intern at my first-choice residency program. After…

  • Applause: Reflections on The Plague and being a doctor in a pandemic

    Roger Ruiz MoralUniversidad Francisco de Vitoria. Madrid, Spain “I imagine then what the plague must be for you.Yes, – said Rieux – an endless defeat.”1 The COVID-19 lockdown is today in its fifth week. In my country, Spain, these measures have been especially severe. I am confined to my house despite being a physician, since…