Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Summer 2018

  • The Irish famine: catastrophe, diaspora, and redemption

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Famine sculpture in Dublin Tensions between the English and the Irish date back to at least the time of Prince John Lackland, who was made Lord of Ireland by his father, Henry II of England in 1177.1 Anti-Catholic sentiments were pronounced by Oliver Cromwell after his invasion…

  • Henrik Sjögren and his syndrome

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig. 1 Henrik Sjögren The esteemed novelist PD James remarked in a book review: “History reminds us of what we are in danger of losing. A glance over our shoulders into medical history may stimulate, challenge, even enhance our own methods and our thinking.“ Although the names of many…

  • A fatal and mysterious illness

    Michael D. Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   In late 1972, a flurry of letters began to appear in the British medical journal The Lancet which captured the alarm, the bafflement, and the intense professional curiosity aroused by a mysterious new illness. The illness was unique to patients receiving hemodialysis, typically those who had been…

  • Eating and drinking during the Renaissance

    Lynn Dattler New York, New York, United States     La Merienda. Luis Egidio Melendez (1716-1780). The period of the Renaissance in Europe was a time of great upheavals, of changes in how people thought and acted, and after the return of Columbus’ sailors from America, in how and what they ate. For most people, bread…

  • The Attentive Nurse

    The “nurse” peeling a lemon in Chardin’s painting bears scant resemblance to what the modern eye would recognize as a nurse.  She holds neither bandages, nor a thermometer, nor medicines. Her “uniform” leans more towards that of a kitchen helper or a housemaid. This is not surprising, because in the days before Florence Nightingale’s reforms nursing…

  • The philosopher’s dementia: Immanuel Kant

    To be the world’s greatest philosopher in the prime of life is no guarantee against developing the ravages of dementia in old age. This is what happened to Immanuel Kant, a little man scarcely five feet tall followed by a devoted servant with an umbrella, who would take his daily walk at so regular an…

  • The tooth pullers

    Gerrit Van Honthorst, 1628, Louvre, Paris. Jan Victors, ca. 1650 M.d Bildenden Kunst, Leipzig. Jan Steen, ca. 1650 check, Mauritshuis, The Hague.  Gerrit Dou, 1630-35, Louvre, Paris. Having a tooth pulled in the days before the advent of modern anesthesia and dental techniques could turn out to be a pretty ghastly experience. There was a…

  • Delicious death in Agatha Christie

    Sylvia A. Pamboukian Moon Township, Pennsylvania, United States   Common Tansy, Niagara Botanical Garden, Niagara Falls, Canada.  Photograph by author. It is a truth rarely acknowledged that an Agatha Christie village is a Jane Austen village gone wrong. Village spinsters still talk scandal over cozied tea pots, and plump vicars still carve Sunday roast with ecclesiastical…

  • Butterfly day

    Marsal Sanches Bismarck, North Dakota, United States   In some cultures, black butterflies are considered omens of death. He did not believe that a black butterfly was an omen of death. It was just some old superstition he remembered hearing from his Brazilian babysitter many years before, sort of a South American banshee. Someone would…

  • “The GBM in Room 9”: On the objectifying power of naming and diagnosing

    Atara Messinger Toronto, Ontario, Canada   French literary theorist and philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) I wheeled the patient through the double doors into the operating room. As I parked the hospital bed next to the operating table, I quickly glanced at the patient’s chart. NAME: ‘J.’ AGE: 28. HISTORY: Progressive headaches, visual changes, and right-sided…