Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2021

  • The patient who provided his own placebo and fully recovered

    Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States My elderly patient began his treatment by complaining about how his mother had behaved towards him in his boyhood. She had hurt him with her name-calling and humiliating insults, and these had apparently resulted in a lifetime of a negativism towards her. He wanted my help to end that negativity.…

  • Tutorial for surgeons by Lawrence Peter Berra

    Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Since the turn of this century, and more so over the past decade, surgeons at various stages of their careers have been dissatisfied with their work and the surgical lifestyle. The main reason for their dissatisfaction seems to be an ever-increasing burden of administrative work, leaving them with little time…

  • Early lessons

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Finally, it was my first day in a US hospital after studying medicine in Europe for five and a half years. A medical education at the very old and renowned Belgian university at which I studied lasted seven years. The school let its foreign students return to their home countries for the…

  • St. Audrey Etheldrida

    JMS PearceHull, England, UK Medicine is full of strange tales, some with unforeseen ramifications. I recently discovered that the origins of the useful word “tawdry” surprisingly lay in a tumor of the throat—nature unspecified—of a seventh-century saint. St. Audrey, Etheldrida, or Æþelðryþ, born c. 636 AD, was an English princess generally referred to as Audrey,…

  • The striking social tableaux vivants of Lejaren à Hiller (1920s to 1940s)

    J.T.H. ConnorSt. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada In 1927 the Davis & Geck (DG) company commissioned artist Lejaren à Hiller to promote its surgical sutures. Hiller’s subsequent advertising campaign of modern art photographs was distributed to doctors across the United States and Canada during the 1920s to 1940s in simulated leather portfolios titled Sutures in Ancient Surgery…

  • Bristol Children’s Hospital and esophageal atresia

    Richard SpicerBristol, United Kingdom Bristol Children’s Hospital The Children’s Hospital in Bristol began as the Free Institution for Diseases of Women and Children in 1857. In 1885 it moved to a purpose-built neo-Gothic building (Fig.1) and continued to treat women and children on the same site until 1940 when bomb damage caused by the Luftwaffe…

  • William Halse Rivers Rivers

    JMS PearceHull, England William Rivers MD FRCP FRS (1864-1922) William Rivers (Fig 1) was a most unusual man, a polymath with careers in neuroscience, ethnology, and psychology. But above all—notwithstanding or perhaps because of personal nervous constraints—he was a man of originality and great humanity. Son of a churchman, he was born in Luton, near…

  • Boccaccio’s Decameron in the world of the coronavirus pandemic

    Mateja LekicPhoenix, Arizona, United States Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameron after the carnage of the bubonic plague in the late 1340s.1 Caused by the highly virulent bacterium Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed an estimated one quarter of the population of Europe and two-thirds of those living in Florence.2,3 What once occurred in…

  • Knock, or The Triumph of Medicine

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The man who feels well is actually sick and doesn’t know it.”—Dr. Knock Jules Romains (1885–1972), author of the play Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine, was a novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, and short story writer. He was considered one of the best writers of his generation.1 This paper presents a detailed…

  • Achilles and his famous tendon

    Krzyś StachakBielsko-Biala, Poland The Achilles tendon is one of the best-known parts of the human body not only because of its name but also because injuries to it are so common. As the largest tendon in the body, it connects the heel bones to the calf muscles and allows vertical movement of the foot, so…