Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winston Churchill

  • Movie review: Première Année (The Freshmen)

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “Never memorize something you can look up.” – Albert Einstein “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill   Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash. Première Année (literally “First Year”) is a 2018 French film. In it, we meet and follow two young men in their first year of…

  • Winston Churchill’s Illnesses

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover: Winston Churchill’s Illnesses by A. Vale and J. Scadding. Winston Churchill was one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century. As such, it is not surprising that he has been the subject of many biographies that have chronicled his life and many achievements, most…

  • A note on medical metaphors

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Cafe au lait patches in NF1. © 1993-2021, University of Washington, Seattle. From GeneReviews. Source. When Winston Churchill memorably referred to his bouts of depression as “black dog,” in two words he painted a picture that embraced feelings, which otherwise would have taken hundreds of words to describe. I have to…

  • Medical and other memories of the Cold War and its Iron Curtain

    Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe  Dundee, Scotland, UK   Iron Curtain as described by Churchill 1946. Edited from original. Original by BigSteve via Wikimedia. (CC BY 1.0) In 1946, Winston Churchill named the political barrier appearing between the Soviet bloc and the West the “Iron Curtain.” It lasted until 1991. I met or crossed it several times. The…

  • Leukemia past and present: Lessons learned and future opportunities

    Nada Hussein Giza, Egypt   John Hughes Bennett. Painting by Henry Wright Kerr. Unknown date. Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation. “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward,” said Winston Churchill in a meeting at The Royal College of Physicians in 1944. At that…

  • Is history good for you? Pros and cons

    Pro “ . . . a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana “A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.” – Sioux proverb “[History is] a pact between the dead,…

  • Leaving nothing to the imagination: Casualties Union and post-war first aid training

    Jessica Douthwaite London, UK   Air raid precaution. Practice, first aid party at work. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY In 1940, a new method for training the emergency services in casualty rescue emerged from the demands of the Second World War.1 Until then, rescue training was perfunctory —neither concerned with recreating representative conditions for trainees,…

  • Lord Moran’s secret

    Winston Churchill, 1941 On December 7, 1941, Winston Churchill heard the news that America had been attacked at Pearl Harbor and that Britain was no longer alone in the war. He immediately decided to visit President Roosevelt in Washington in order to coordinate their attack and defense strategy.1 Arriving in Washington after nearly 10 days…

  • Disciplinary architecture: prison design and prisoners’ health

    Niyi Awofeso Perth, Australia “First we shape our buildings; then they shape us” Winston Churchill, 1943   Architectural plans for NewGate Prison, London, c. 1800 (left) and Church of St. Roch, Lisbon, c. 1578 (right) Creating the built environment, the surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, draws on multiple disciplines, including architecture and…