Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: The New York Times

  • Ben Hecht and the “Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers”

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The January 16, 1943 issue of Collier’s Weekly featured a short story by the famous and multifaceted author Ben Hecht titled “Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers,” with the subtitle “The X Club hosts a post-mortem.” The publisher framed the text with a black-and-white illustration of a group of masked…

  • Oliver Sacks and caring for the whole person

    Margaret MarcumBoca Raton, Florida The neurologist Oliver Sacks—“The Poet Laureate of Medicine” according to The New York Times—developed an effective clinical method of treating the patient as a complete person rather than as a defective body part. He wrote that clinicians “are concerned not simply with a handful of ‘symptoms,’ but with a person, and…

  • It’s elementary: The addictions of Sherlock Holmes

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, USA One might ask, why write about the addictions of a fictional character? The answer is that there is often a fine line between reality and fiction. The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently quoted a survey that found 20% of British teenagers thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional…