Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winston Churchill

  • Movie review: Première Année (The Freshmen)

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Never memorize something you can look up.” – Albert Einstein“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill Première Année (literally “First Year”) is a 2018 French film. In it, we meet and follow two young men in their first year of medical school. Benjamin, like most of his classmates, enters…

  • Winston Churchill’s Illnesses

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom 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 notably the comprehensive eight-volume opus by British historian and Churchill scholar, Martin…

  • A note on medical metaphors

    JMS PearceHull, England 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 confess a liking for certain medical metaphors. Though they can be overused in medical and biological…

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

    Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe Dundee, Scotland, UK 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 first time was around 1950. The family flew a war-surplus box-kite on Parliament Hill, overlooking Hampstead, London. The reel broke.…

  • Leukemia past and present: Lessons learned and future opportunities

    Nada HusseinGiza, Egypt “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 time, leukemia was a fatal disease.1 Representing 8% of all cancers incidence today,2 it had long been regarded as an inflammatory disorder because of…

  • 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, the living, and…

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

    Jessica DouthwaiteLondon, UK 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, nor taking account of the quality of victims’ experiences. Due to the exigencies of the war,…

  • Lord Moran’s secret

    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 at sea, the…

  • Disciplinary architecture: prison design and prisoners’ health

    Niyi AwofesoPerth, Australia “First we shape our buildings; then they shape us”Winston Churchill, 1943 Creating the built environment, the surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, draws on multiple disciplines, including architecture and law. Prisons and their many variants are built environments whose intended purpose is punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation (Reasons & Kaplan,…