Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Winter 2021

  • Review of Fracture: Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The lives of people who seem to be endowed with extraordinary abilities have long been a source of fascination. The famous Italian physician, researcher, and founder of the science of criminology, Cesare Lombroso, professed this interest in his 1889 book The Man of Genius, stating that genius was a form…

  • The other Timothy Leary

    Saty Satya-MurtiSanta Maria, California, United States Most people know the name of Timothy Leary as an American counterculture guru and psychologist who had a massive following in the mid-twentieth century. He invoked the names of Gandhi, Jesus, and Socrates as his martyred models; was associated with Aldous Huxley, John Lennon, and Jack Kerouac; and fissioned…

  • Enlightenment from Sherlock Holmes on COVID-19 associated perilous boredom

    Daniel GelfmanIndianapolis, Indiana, United States Boredom can useful. It can motivate people to do great things. It can also be dangerous by increasing the risk of depression and the risk of participation in unhealthy activities.1 It is an emotional state of weariness through lack of interest that can result in the “pursuit of novel (even negative)…

  • The finality in their voices II: Physiology-defying violent opera death

    Lea C. DacyEelco F.M. WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States In a previous article, we reviewed the plausibility of opera deaths in wasting diseases such as that of Violetta in La Traviata. But operatic death is not always gentle: murder, suicide, and executions regularly befall operatic heroes and villains. These often make a great impression but do…

  • Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, and Moses

    Faraze A. NiaziJack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. Numbers 12:6 (NIV) “Harriet and Joan, what topic has your two fine souls so deeply engrossed?” “Moses, we were discussing recent hurtful…

  • The finality in their voices: Death, disease, and palliation in opera

    Lea C. DacyEelco F. M. WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States I know she had tuberculosis! She was coughing her brains out . . . but still she kept right on singing.* Operatic death is often glorious, melodious, and heartbreaking. Naturally, composers and librettists can claim pristine ignorance when it comes to the process of dying. Leaving…

  • A moonie

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Wally Moon was a legend who stood at least 1.90 meters tall. The most striking things about him were his appearance and his gruffness. When I met him during my residency he was in his early sixties. He had a magnificent girth, fuelled by quantities of non-politically correct food—even then in…

  • Young, pretty, and not quite right

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Unless we are in pediatrics, we start in clinical practice with our patients tending to be in the age range of our parents, or even older. Increasingly, as the grey in our temples is promoted to silver, their mean age gets closer to ours, and the percentage of younger patients keeps rising.…

  • Ludwig van Beethoven: music and medicine

    Michael YafiChaden YafiHouston, Texas, United States December 2020 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. The causes of the composer’s deafness and his death at the age of fifty-six have remained unknown, even after an autopsy carried out soon after his death. Beethoven was also known to have mood swings, which…

  • Beauty in breaking

    Lealani AcostaNashville, Tennessee, United States I had a succulent hanging from my office cabinet, suspended in a clear teardrop-shaped terrarium: its spiny green arches floated above a mound of fake snow, which I intermittently illuminated by touching the built-in switch that electrified interwoven fairy lights. It was a Christmas present from James’s sister. She had come…