Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sylvia R. Karasu

  • Albert C. Barnes, MD: the physician who spun silver into gold

    Sylvia KarasuNew York, New York, United States Albert C. Barnes is known as the man who accumulated an incomparable art collection for a foundation that bears his name. Few, though, may know how he earned a place in the history of medicine, specifically through his development of Argyrol, the unique compound that was the source…

  • Hawthorne’s The Birthmark: A failure to find a perfect future in an imperfect present

    Sylvia KarasuNew York City, New York, United States In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, 1 Aylmer, “a man of science” leaves the somber, factory-like atmosphere of his laboratory to marry the beautiful Georgiana.  Aylmer “had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any secondary passion,” and seems to…

  • Compassion failure, schadenfreude, and the fall of Icarus

    Sylvia R. KarasuNew York, United States “About suffering they were never wrong / The Old Masters…how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”1 So wrote W.H. Auden in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts in response to his viewing the painting Landscape with the…