Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: The hospital

  • Movie review: Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Surgeons operating aboard the USS Harry S. Truman. US Navy photo via Wikimedia. Public domain. “Medicine is power. It makes us giants.” – Dr. Daniele Valotti in Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca   Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca (1973) is an understated, well-acted, and critical “doctor movie.” Unlike The Hospital, it is…

  • Movie review: The Hospital, “the wounded madhouse of our times”

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Protesters in San Francisco. Photo by Rdmsf01. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0.   “Where do you train your nurses, Mrs. Christie, Dachau?” — Dr. Herbert Bock, The Hospital   The Hospital (1971) is a devastating satire about American medicine in the second half of the twentieth century. We see the functioning…

  • The time between our hands

    Samantha Below Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States   The hospital. Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash Thread passes from the tools in your hands to be pulled by mine. You suture the vessels. I clear the path of knots. Our posture is separated by inches, our hearts by hand-breadths. Our hands are identical in the vibrations…

  • Coronary heart disease

    Matko Marusic Croatia Translated by Dalibora Behmen   Heart attack One night, Ivo felt a strong pressure in his chest. It was followed by fear and panic. He knew at once what had caused this catastrophe, and spoke of it dispassionately and with the technical precision of an engineer who is sick. The cause was…