Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winter 2011

  • Book Review: Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrow of Work

    Sima BarmaniaLondon, United Kingdom What do you suppose biscuit manufacturing and the healthcare profession have in common? Well, according to Alain de Botton they both attain a sense of meaning by increasing pleasure or decreasing the suffering of another human being, a necessary prerequisite for a “meaningful” occupation. Societies in the past have sought out…

  • Caduceus versus the Staff of Asclepius

    This painting from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is attributed to Gaspare Pagani, a relatively obscure sixteenth century artist from Modena, Italy, the world capital of balsamic vinegar. It shows an elderly man carrying a staff with two serpents coiled around it, serving to identify him as a physician. The man has made no momentous…

  • The model for Albrecht Dürer’s Praying Hands

    William R. AlburyGeorge M. WeiszNew South Wales, Australia The image of Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer, painted on an altarpiece in the sixteenth century and destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, has come down to us in the form of a preparatory drawing on blue-grey paper (Fig. 1). The popularity of this image is impressive because…

  • The anatomy of beauty in nineteenth-century England

    Alan W. BatesLondon, United Kingdom Few characteristics seem more subjective and less amenable to scientific study than beauty. As the philosopher David Hume wrote in 1741, “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” How then did some nineteenth-century European anatomists come to see human beauty as a branch of science for which…

  • The veteran’s hospital

    Helen FosterRichmond, Virginia, United States Poet’s statement Before I went to medical school, I followed doctor’s orders to hold my toddler son down and force on him more eye-drops than he needed to dilate his pupils. He panicked, and the atropine drops made him hallucinate. The incident I describe in my poem “The Veteran’s Hospital”…

  • Breast Cancer Suite

    Terri EricksonLewisville, North Carolina, United States Poet’s statement Since I became a published poet, it has been my privilege to spend a few hours volunteering at one of our local cancer centers, working with a very compassionate chaplain—one who understands the healing power of words. She invited me first, to speak with a group of…

  • Meaning and the cognitive default

    Basil BrookeJohannesburg, South Africa Being human invariably involves a strong tendency to search for meaning in life. This search takes many forms; it can be a quest for psychological immortality/conscious afterlife, an intelligent, supernatural design of oneself, a symbolic meaning to life and natural events, a causal link between mortal behavior and the quality of…

  • Of starlit huts and Sahelian sand

    Sara BuckChicago, Illinois, United States Landing in Dakar airport, the Air Afrique flight from New York hummed into the humid night air. Having traversed the nocturnal waters of the Atlantic, our plane descended upon the capital city, its sparse lights glittering along the coast and the nearby Île de Gorrée as if lava were streaming…

  • What God gives: Prayers from Africa

    Marcia Whitney-SchenckChicago, Illinois, United States Rev. David Ambola from Mbingo, Cameroon, has remarked that Africans are incurably religious. Indeed, for many in Africa, religion permeates every aspect of their lives, from Christian messages on the rear windows of taxis to hand-crafted signs in hospital waiting rooms. Hand surgeon Dr. Robert Schenck and his wife, photographer…

  • Artful science

    Julie Schnidman & Annie YehChicago, Illinois, USA Science and art play integral roles in shaping the content of Hektoen International. Therefore, we wanted to highlight the work of three artist/scientists from the Chicago area and explore the influences behind their eclectic career paths. We met Hunter Cole, Peter Gray, and Vesna Jovanovic at a panel…