Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sylvia Pamboukian

  • James Herriot and burnout

    Sylvia PamboukianMoon Township, Pennsylvania, United States The James Herriot veterinary stories are so beloved by readers that they have inspired two television series called All Creatures Great and Small and have sold over sixty million copies.1 James Herriot is the pen name of James Alfred “Alf” Wight, who was born in 1916 and graduated from…

  • Vampires and the Tuberculous Family

    Sylvia PamboukianMoon Township, PA An isolated village, a series of mysterious deaths, a mob in the graveyard at midnight—it sounds like the climax of a thrilling vampire story. However, these events occurred in 1892 Rhode Island at the gravesite of tuberculosis victim Mercy Brown five years prior to the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).…

  • 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…