Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: The Plague

  • A return to The Plague

    Bonnie SalomonChicago, Illinois, United States For the past fifteen months, I have been reading and returning to Albert Camus’ 1947 novel, The Plague. Chronicling a fictional plague epidemic in Oran, Algeria, the narrator Dr. Rieux tells the saga of a city’s horrific struggle. When Covid-19 hit American shores in March 2020, scholars and journalists alike…

  • Drawing parallels in pandemic art

    Mariella Scerri Mellieha, MaltaVictor GrechPembroke, Malta “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.”1 Albert Camus, The Plague Experts have long analyzed plans and developed scenarios to respond to an infectious…

  • Remembering Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, physician philosopher

    Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, United States “Get Wisdom.”– Proverbs 4:5 One day in the spring of 1985, I remember jogging past the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, wondering what went on in there. It was a gorgeous afternoon, dogwoods and cherry blossoms in bloom. Students sprawled on the campus lawns. I was a medical…

  • The Plague and physician burnout

    Geoffrey RubinMark AbramsD. Edmund AnsteyNew York, New York, United States In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague,1 Doctor Rieux is a consummate physician, a hero and a “true healer.” His main charge is to compassionately perform his duty—a matter, in his words, of “common decency”—despite the personal risk of infection and death. Rieux embodies the Oslerian…

  • Applause: Reflections on The Plague and being a doctor in a pandemic

    Roger Ruiz MoralUniversidad Francisco de Vitoria. Madrid, Spain “I imagine then what the plague must be for you.Yes, – said Rieux – an endless defeat.”1 The COVID-19 lockdown is today in its fifth week. In my country, Spain, these measures have been especially severe. I am confined to my house despite being a physician, since…

  • Starvation as metaphor

    Michael Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The mystery of FoodIncreased till I abjured itAnd dine without Like God— Emily Dickinson Susan Sontag’s 1978 essay Illness as Metaphor,1 published in serial form in The New York Review of Books, was a cultural event that continues to stimulate reflection and analysis forty years later. Based on an examination…

  • Charite hospital

    Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands On November 14, 1709, King Frederik I of Prussia planted a small seed that over the following three centuries grew, branch by branch, into one of the foremost medical research and treatment centers in the world. Plague House, 1709 In 1709 a malignant outbreak of bubonic plague that had almost depopulated…