Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: United States

  • Alexis Carrel: The sunshine and the shadow

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs, and later developed techniques that were predecessors…

  • Dr. Aufderheide and the mummies

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Paleopathology, the study of early animal and human artifacts, offers a historical perspective of disease and injury in the distant past. It uses skeletal and mummified remains as the substrate for this analysis. The discipline is about 200 years old and initially the analysis was based on abnormalities of…

  • They don’t teach us that

    Evelyn PotochnyHershey, Pennsylvania, United States You called in your own medevac. You’d even tourniqueted both legs, or what was left of them. And when the Chinook kicked up all that dust and finally landed, you looked so—calm. Someone read each name and the litany of injuries while we watched each stretcher pass by, yours included—a…

  • Did Ernest Hemingway have the Celtic curse?

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Considering Ernest Hemingway’s mishaps before he died in 1961 by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, it is surprising that he lived so long. He survived two plane crashes several days apart that left him with a concussion, burns, cracked ribs and vertebrae, and ruptures of the liver, spleen, and kidneys.…

  • Reconstructing memories and history in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

    Tonse N.K. RajuGaithersburg, Maryland, United States “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” In the opening sentence of his extraordinary masterpiece, Gabriel García Márquez distilled the recurring themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude1: the absurdity…

  • The navel of the world: Belly buttons, innies and outies

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States In 1999, I traveled from Panama to Easter Island, via the Galapagos, as a passenger/deckhand/ship’s surgeon on an old square-rigged sailing ship. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s history and description of the island had captured my imagination. Easter Island, the most remote, isolated place on earth, was originally settled…

  • The remarkable Harriet Lane

    Colin K. L. PhoonNew York, New York, United States The name “Harriet Lane” is well-known to many pediatricians, but perhaps fewer recognize this woman’s other roles in US history (Hint: She was not a pediatrician!). In fact, the US presidency, the military, and pediatric medicine are all linked to the name “Harriet Lane.” Who was…

  • On beauty and medical ethics

    John Eberly Jr.Anderson, South Carolina, United StatesLydia DugdaleNew York, United States Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing, partaking, creating. Beautiful things invite participation; we find ourselves lingering and listening long. We leave inspired and moved to respond. As artists and poets have…

  • Head and hand: Claude Bernard’s experimental medicine

    James A. MarcumWaco, Texas, United States Claude Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale, originally published in 1865, occupies a critical position in the development of experimental medicine and science.1 In the introduction to the book, Bernard claims that “each kind of science presents different phenomena and complexities and difficulties of investigations peculiarly its…

  • Learning the meaning of love

    Charlotte EliopoulosGlen Arm, Maryland, United States In the summer before my senior year in high school, I spent my vacation as a candy striper. In the sixties, this was an opportunity for young girls interested in nursing to serve as hospital volunteers and gain some insight into their career of choice. Being young and naïve—and…