Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: The psychological impact of facial injury in the First World War: outcomes from the Queen’s Hospital Sidcup

  • Nonsense poetry

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently, I read the Israeli professor Rony Reich’s translation of German nonsense poetry (Deutsche Unsinnpoesie), and among them, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Lügenmärchen (Lying Fairy Tales). I translate from the Hebrew:  …Three wished to catch a hare,On crutches they came—a team.One… Read more

  • The two doctors Bigelow from New England

    Students of eighteenth-century history are familiar with the two great prime ministers of England, William Pitt the Elder and William Pitt the Younger. Medical historians, however, may be more interested in the two Boston physicians, Jacob and Henry Bigelow, also father and son, who in… Read more

  • Why did the chickens refuse to eat before the Roman defeat at Deprana (249 BC)?

    Andrew N. WilliamsLeicester, England The Roman defeat by Carthage during the First Punic War at the naval battle of Deprana (or Drepanum, modern Trapani) is also remembered for its preceding event of the refusal of the sacred chickens onboard the Roman flagship to eat. Witnessing… Read more

  • Ming the clam: Methodical measurement of the maturity of the Methuselah of mollusks

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Clams don’t carry birth certificates.”– Samantha Larson, National Geographic1 The maximum human lifespan is about 120 years, and research continues to find ways to increase that maximum. Knowing the maximum lifespan of other species and how they manage to achieve it may… Read more

  • Living behind a mask (Is it being one’s self?)

    Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States In my retirement in Lincoln, I have found myself looking back at life. Those memories brought me smiles, but that is not what I want to share now. It is the memories that did not bring smiles. It is the… Read more

  • Book review: Rearranged: An Opera Singer’s Facial Cancer and Life Transposed

    Amanda CalebScranton, Pennsylvania, United States “Keeping secrets? We don’t keep secrets. Do we?” (23). This internal questioning precipitates Kathleen Watt’s disclosure of a bump on her gum to her partner Evie, which begins the story of her winding journey with cancer in Rearranged: An Opera… Read more

  • A Silent Voice: A case study of suicidality

    Ryan XiaSan Francisco, California, United States During the COVID-19 pandemic, deaths from suicide surged as social isolation disrupted daily routine and promoted feelings of loneliness and anxiety.1 The pandemic shed light on risk factors that increase one’s likelihood of committing suicide,2 such as the loss… Read more

  • Of toerags and spice boxes: Sanitation at sea

    Richard De GrijsSydney, Australia At 5 P.M. it blew rather fresh, but so steady that the Top Gallant sails were not taken in. The Purser went into the weather round House about this time, which is fixed in the Galley, on the Ships Bows. While… Read more

  • From gout to rheumatoid arthritis

    Although the English physician William Musgrave described the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in his 1715 publication De Arthritide Symptomatica, credit is usually given to the twenty-year-old French physician Augustin Jacob Landré-Beauvais (1772–1840). Working at the Saltpêtrière in Paris, he described a disease somewhat different from… Read more

  • Errare humanum est

    Bob ScottScotland “Erring is human; not to, animal”– Robert Frost, The White-tailed Hornet Why is it so difficult to face up to our shortcomings? It is more than 300 years since Alexander Pope wrote1 that a defining characteristic of humankind was to err, while granting… Read more

  • Loving them to death: Animal hoarding disorder

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The Lord said to Noah… ‘Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal…and one pair of every unclean animal…and also seven pairs of every kind of bird.’”– Genesis 7, in the Old Testament Between 2–6 % of people are… Read more

  • No one is speaking

    Nina SokolDenmark A translated excerpt from the poetry collection No One Is Speaking by Danish writer Birte Kont, depicting when her husband underwent cancer treatment. The collection has received considerable praise in Denmark in its honest portrayal of what loved ones and close kin endure… Read more