Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Vignettes

  • Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind

    Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I opened my eyes. Then suddenly the room began to distort.…

  • Shostakovich and the simian serenade

    Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland One of the fascinations of medical humanities is the two-way traffic between artists and scientists with cutting-edge aspects of science, technology, and medicine. A signal example is the heady ferment of scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union. One of the more exotic experiments was the effort by Professor Ilya Ivanov to hybridize…

  • Physicians as inventors

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure, and money.”—Albert Szent-Györgyi, 1937 Inventions can be created either following a sudden enlightenment (for which Claude Bernard coined the term être frappé—to be punched or after a long investigation). Relatively few physicians…

  • Francisco Javier de Balmis and the first international vaccination campaign

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Smallpox was a human scourge until the early nineteenth century. It had caused almost half a million deaths in Europe alone when Edward Jenner introduced vaccination into clinical practice in 1798 with his famous publication “An enquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae” and the 1801 publication “The…

  • The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore

    The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore spans centuries of healing activities derived from indigenous traditions, colonial influences, and scientific advances. Long before the colonial era, local communities practiced herbal medicine using ingredients derived from the tropical rainforest’s flora, using methods passed down through generations, often combining herbal remedies with rituals, incantations, and divination.…

  • The London teaching medical schools

    London’s hospitals have played a key part in medical history. The earliest ones were not medical schools, but religious or charitable institutions established to serve the poor, infirm, and pilgrims. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, founded in 1123 by Rahere, an Augustinian monk and former courtier of King Henry, was one of these early establishments, followed by…

  • Imhotep: Humanity’s great physician and polymath

    Brian O’DeaIllinois, United States Imhotep is regarded as one of history’s first polymaths, a man whose genius transcended disciplines. Few figures in the ancient world stand as tall as Imhotep. As vizier to the pharaoh Djoser of the third dynasty (c. 27th century BC), he envisioned the first major stone monument, the step pyramid at…

  • The Latest Decalogue  

    Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) Thou shalt have one God only; who  Would tax himself to worship two?  God’s image nowhere shalt thou see,  Save haply in the currency:  Swear not at all; since for thy curse  Thine enemy is not the worse:  At church on Sunday to attend  Will help to keep the world thy friend:  Honor thy parents; that is, all  From whom…

  • On extracampine hallucinations and Alexander Selkirk

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel In what may be justifiably described as the “third man factor syndrome,” some people may experience the hallucination that another person is present with them in the room. The long-term war correspondent Sebastian Junger described such a phenomenon when, during an emergency surgery for a ruptured aneurysm, he had imagined that…

  • The deaths of the Romantic poets

    The deaths of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, all occurring within five years of each other, form a tragic trilogy in the history of English Romantic poetry. Each died young, and their ends reflect the turbulence, idealism, and fragility that marked their youthful spirits as well as an era in English poetry.…