Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Wisdom

  • Being our best selves: hidden in full view

    James Stoller Peter Rea Alan Kolp Cleveland, Ohio, United States   Figure 1. Pillars and pediment We live in a paradox framed by a tension between age-old wisdom about excellence and our current state. The paradox is this: our behaviors and our priorities are often at odds with age-old truths about how we can be…

  • Between frames: liminality and the emergence of self

    Jane Persons Iowa City, Iowa, United States   Human hippocampus, 2X magnification, Luxol fast blue stain. Photo credit: Karra Jones, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Department of Pathology, Iowa City, Iowa, United States The development of compassion, along with wisdom, skill, and communication, is pivotally important to the practice of medicine.1 Perhaps even more importantly, development…

  • Eliot’s triad: information, knowledge, and wisdom in medicine

    Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece   Where is the Wisdom we have lost in Knowledge? Where is the Knowledge we have lost in Information?  Photography by Les Taylor I first saw these well-known lines by T. S. Eliot1 inscribed as a motto on the flyleaf of a Greek textbook on internal medicine. I was a student…