Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winter 2015

  • Patients bearing gifts

    Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece   Photography by Marju Randmer It is not uncommon for practicing clinicians to receive gifts of gratitude. Patients have their way of expressing their appreciation for whatever service they believe we offered them in the course of their health misadventures. The prevalence of gift-giving may vary with the healthcare system (state…

  • The song of diabetes

    Annabelle Slingerland Wouter Jukema The Netherlands   We would like to thank Dr. Robin Seeley and Rosemary McNally.   Preface Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are now so routinely diagnosed and treated that we rarely consider their origins. However, this distinction did not officially exist until it first appeared in the International Classification of…

  • Taste buds

    Pinky Tripathi Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India   Sense of Taste Acrylic on paper, 72x53cm The sense of taste evolved in the earliest vertebrates, subject to different interpretation by organisms. Taste is mediated through taste buds, each supported by a narrow connective tissue papilla from the underlying tissues through which the taste buds get their nerve…

  • Imaging in medicine: fine art to medical art

    Arabella ProfferCleveland, Ohio, United States Studying anatomy was something I had never taken seriously or practiced much in art school. Frankly, I was mediocre at it. As a result, I developed into a mannerist painter and on occasion distorted anatomy to add an artificial quality. I find this strange, considering my new fascination the last…

  • Life is a game: visual metaphors in Brian Fies’s Mom’s Cancer

    Sathyaraj VenkatesanAnu Mary PeterTiruchirapalli, India Motivated by a “desire to give meaning to the lives lived in uncertainty”1 and illustrate the experience of enduring an illness, the creators of comics often resort to visual metaphors that render a patient’s physical and psychological experiences tangible.2,3 In Mom’s Cancer (2006) Brian Fies deploys a series of visual…

  • Art and the myth of the “wandering womb”

    Laurinda DixonNew York, United States Seventeenth-century Dutch paintings bearing modern titles such as “The Doctor’s Visit” or “The Lovesick Maiden” are common.1 They were once produced in great numbers and, with some variations, illustrate the same thing. The example by Jan Steen in the Taft Museum in Cincinnati (Fig. 1) is typical. Here a pretty young…

  • Abbott Handerson Thayer’s art and fin de siècle American culture

    Gregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849–1921) straddled the fin de siècle, and with his brush preserved an American counterculture for posterity. His variegated oeuvre reflects substantive reflections of his period’s medical and religious culture, as well as the earliest American naturalism. His was a momentous time as science unfolded the implications of…

  • The Blade

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, USA   The blade slashes through the skin Not in violence But in cure It is held not by an assailant But by a surgeon The same instrument But with such cross purposes As a surgeon, I know the fear and anticipation That proceeds the strike Assailants must feel the…

  • The discovery of oxygen

    David Poole Michael White Kansas, United States Brian Whipp Powys, Wales   Jacques-Louis David’s (1788) painting of Marie-Anne and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier which now hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Note flasks for collection and analysis of expired gases. We live submerged in a sea of life-preserving oxygen. As I sit at my desk,…

  • EKG

    Miriam Ancis Study 2: Gouache and Ink. 5 x 7.  2007.     Study 3: Gouache and Ink. 5 x 7. 2007     Green Wave 2: Pastel and Charcoal. 41 x 26. 2006     Cells 1: Charcoal and Ink. 22 x 30. 2007     MIRIAM ANCIS has an MFA in sculpture from…