Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Virginia Woolf

  • Mrs. Dalloway and shell shock

    Cristóbal S. Berry-CabánFort Liberty, North Carolina, United States The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I surpassed those of previous conflicts, as some 8.5 million soldiers died from wounds or disease.1,2 Artillery caused most of the casualties, followed by small arms and poison gas. However, the war’s signature injury became known as shell…

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning—Isolation and the artist

    Elizabeth Lovett Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best known for the poem “How do I Love Thee,” addressed to her husband Robert Browning, as well as their courtship, elopement, and subsequent years together in Europe. However, one might revisit her life and prolific work in light of the many years of…

  • The use of language in health and illness narratives

    Mariella ScerriVictor Grech Malta While I was as busy as anyoneon the sunny plain of life, I heardof you laid aside in the shadowyrecess where our sunshine ofhope and joy could neverpenetrate to you.– Harriet Martineau1 Literary works can illustrate the loneliness and social isolation experienced by people when they are sick.2 The chasm between health…

  • Mental illness in art

    JMS PearceHull, England It is often said that creative art is linked to eccentricity, sometimes bordering on madness. Examples abound of great musicians, writers, and artists who at some time in their lives were deranged and often committed to institutions for mental illness. Some ended their lives in suicide. To what extent is art inspired…

  • The other kingdom

    Jamie SamsonDublin, Ireland “Everyone who is born,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor, “holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.”1 While the passport denoting health and vigor might get us through customs most of the time, we eventually reach that unwelcome day when it is…

  • A love-driven model of suicide prevention

    Kate BaggottSt. Catharines, Ontario, Canada The suicide barrier on the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto is called the Luminous Veil. The beauty of the title is that it is intentional and intelligent. Construction of the barrier started in 2003 after more than a decade of advocacy. It was installed just a few years after the…

  • Creativity and psychopathology in literature

    Montserrat KawasChicago, Illinois, United States “There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.” — Aristotle“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” — Edgar Allan Poe William Faulkner, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf, among many others, all suffered from one of the most challenging psychiatric illnesses,…