Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Stephen Martin

  • Art, anhedonia, and family psychodynamics in the creativity of Nathaniel Hawthorne

    Stephen MartinThailand There are interesting questions about how the mental phenomenology of the great writer Nathaniel Hawthorne1 drove his work. His supreme narrative gift and engaging observation were shadowed by anhedonia, which is a complete or partial lack of the ability to experience pleasure and a hallmark of clinical depression. In modern criteria,2 major depressive…

  • Blindness and visual sensory distortion in Thomas Bewick’s woodcuts

    Stephen Martin Thailand   The artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) was one of the Enlightenment’s leading polymaths. He wrote groundbreaking books on birds1 and mammals,2 as well as an autobiography, which is absorbing and charming. This Memoir of Thomas Bewick3 is a delightfully detailed window on the eighteenth century and Regency periods, focusing on…

  • Clinical signs in images of King Henry VII

    Stephen Martin Durham, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Funeral effigy of King Henry VII. Copyright Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Westminster Abbey has a superb effigy that was made for the funeral of King Henry VII. (Fig 1) Henry, born in 1457 and deceased in 1509, was famous for defeating Richard III in the Wars…

  • The painting of the Good Samaritan in Bracciano Castle

    Stephen Martin Thailand   Fig. 1. The Good Samaritan, Bracciano Castle, Lazio, Italy, c. 1600–1610. Photographed by author with curator’s permission to publish in Hektoen International. The Orsini of Bracciano were one of the richest and most powerful aristocratic families in early modern Italy.1 Much of their impressive collection remains in Bracciano Castle, Lazio,2 and…

  • John Hunter, his wolf dogs, and the inherited smiles of Pomeranians

    Stephen Martin United Kingdom   Fig 1. Title of Hunter’s Royal Society wolf dogs paper. © Author, from original, CC-BY 4.0 John Hunter, 1728-1793, was a polymathic doctor. Besides being an anatomist and clinician, he was also interested in early genetics, exemplified by his “Observations tending to shew that the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog, are…

  • A Regency epitaph for a child

    Stephen Martin County Durham, UK   In some spot where common herbage grows Perchance a violet rears its purple head: Some careful gardener plucks it ere it blows To spread and flourish in a nobler bed: Such was thy fate dear child, thy opening such Pre-eminence in early bloom was shown: Too good for earth…

  • St. Godric and the lost leper hospital of Darlington

    Stephen Martin UK   Fig 1. Godric praying to the Virgin, c 1400. PD-US, accessed: wikimedia, original: ©British Library Board, Cotton, Faustina, VI, ii 16 V. In the late 1100s, the English monk Reginald of Durham wrote an account in Latin of the hermit St. Godric, whom he knew personally.1 Reginald attributed over two hundred…

  • The monastic infirmaries of North Yorkshire

    Stephen Martin UK   Fig 1. Well-preserved walls of Rievaulx Abbey, 1225-40. Photo © author, 2021, permission for non-commercial and academic reuse.     Fig 2. Rievaulx, decorated gothic chancel of the Abbey Church, c. 1240, looking west, avant-garde architecture for its time. Photo © author, 2021, permission for non-commercial and academic reuse.   North…

  • The medieval hospitals of County Durham

    Stephen Martin County Durham, UK   Fig 1. Durham Cathedral, gate of Benedictine Priory, exterior, built by Prior Castell, 1494-1519. Photo © author, 2021, permission for academic & non-commercial reuse. County Durham in the northeast of England is rich in the atmospheric remains and documented history of medieval hospitals, all connected with the church. Looking…

  • Alfred Skirrow Robinson: the colorful life of a Roaring Twenties surgeon

    Stephen Martin Durham, UK & Thailand   Fig 1. Bentley Speed Six. Source: Craig Howell, CC BY 2.0,  Wikimedia In 1926 my grandfather started work for Dr. A.S. Robinson in Redcar, a small town on the Yorkshire coast. The doctor needed a driver—at least that was the plan at first. He sent him for a…