Tag: Winter 2017
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Music and the brain
Rayda Joomun Mauritius “The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colours in your mind” – Maria Cristina Mena Music brings a smile to our faces. Yet this abstract entity has no conventional defining criteria. Proust acknowledged this: “Music helped me to descend into myself, to discover new things; the…
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Was the Mozart Effect evident before the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
Harishnath Ramachandran England, United Kingdom “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” – Plato Statue of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) taken by Mrs. Sanju Ramachandran (Vienna 2009) The word music is derived from the Greek word “mousike”, meaning art of the muses. It is considered a form of…
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Public health measures derived from the Jewish tradition: II. Washing and cleaning
Tova Chein,Mark Epelbaum,Robert SternNew York, New York, United States Introduction Historically, Jewish contributions to public health measures have not been given adequate attribution. The previous article in this series (Hektoen International, Winter 2016) documented the ancient Jewish recognition of the importance of: The ritual washing of hands There are many forms of washing identified in the…
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Huetation
Sooo-z Mastropietro Westport, CT Inspiration can appear unexpectedly just like progress born from sickness. Huetation, inspired by Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and film documentary The Way of All Flesh took awe from an 8 second visual of mutating cancer cells, displayed with a sequence of 3 images in…
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Queer and unked: Disability, monstrosity, and George Eliot’s “Sympathy”
Christina Lee Kent, United Kingdom Silas finds Eppie. Eliot, George. The Jenson Society, NY. In The Mill on the Floss, the intellectual and sensitive Philip Wakem, who has a curved spine from a fall in infancy, is called “a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.”1(II.vi) In the manuscript Philip Wakem is branded…
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Portraits of vision: Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States Fig 1. Joshua Reynolds, Self Portrait, 1788, Royal Collection Trust, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The subject of this portrait wears wiry, diminutive round spectacles, lending a distinctly pedantic flair. Yet gazing out is none other than Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), one of the greatest English painters in history…
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Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904). The study of movement in the functions of life: eclecticism and inventiveness
Philippe Campillo Lille, France “[…] I think, together with Claude Bernard, that movement is the most important act, in that all the functions come into play in order to achieve it.”1 Fig 1. Marey, Etienne Jules (1830–1904) Courtesy of Collection BIU Health Medicine, Open License. Marey had a long and distinguished scientific career…