Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: World War Two

  • A tale of two physicians and Albert Göring

    Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel   Hermann Epenstein. Via German Wikipedia. Fair use. Hermann Epenstein Ritter von Mauternburg (1850–1934) was a physician and merchant who played a significant role in the lives of anti-Nazi activist Albert Göring and his family. He was their family doctor, a close friend, and godfather to Albert and his older…

  • Making radiation visible: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Godzilla

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Gojira (Godzilla) poster. © Toho Company, 1954. Via Wikimedia. Fair use. “The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb.”1 – Tomoyuki Tanaka, producer of Gojira (Godzilla)   The Third Reich surrendered to the Allies in early May 1945. This did not yet end World…

  • Dr. Alice Miller on Hitler’s childhood

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “All it took was a Führer’s madness and several million well-raised Germans to extinguish the lives of countless millions of innocent human beings in the space of a few short years.” – Alice Miller, Ph.D.   Jewish women and children removed from a bunker. From the Stroop Report, a report…

  • Scotland’s Anthrax Island

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Cutaneous anthrax lesion on the neck, May 25, 1953. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Image Library. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “They make a desolation and call it peace.” — Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001)   During World War Two, the British government purchased from its owners the Gruinard…

  • Lina Shtern and the blood brain barrier

    Irving Rosen Toronto, Ontario, Canada   Dr. Lina Shtern (1878-1968), an esteemed Russian physiologist did pioneering work with the blood brain barrier, and experienced distress as a result of her involvement in the WWII Russian war effort. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image No. SIA2009-3768. Future generations will remember our age for unbelievable electronic progress, but also…

  • The first effective chemotherapy for cancer

    Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   Caution: Chemotherapy. Photo by Justin Levy. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0   Sulfur mustard gas had no influence on the outcome of the battle at Ypres during World War I despite the many deaths and severe injuries it inflicted. Since then, chemical weapons have been used in…

  • Japanese-American internment camps in World War Two

    Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States   Bill Mauldin’s cartoons regarding the NISEI 15   “What constitutes an American? Not color…race…An American…(is) one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.”1  “Any person who considers himself…a member of Western Society inherits the Western past from Athens and Jerusalem to Runneymede…

  • Westerbork Hospital—a blessing in disguise

    Annabelle S. Slingerland Leiden, the Netherlands   Westerbork Hospital from the outside This year Westerbork Hospital in the east of the Netherlands celebrates its seventieth anniversary, not of its birth but of its closure. Despite its well-deserved reputation for medical care, it was part of Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork, a Nazi concentration camp that held persons selected…

  • Philosophy and Medicine

    Roger Paden Virginia, United States   Philosophy, 1899–1907 Gustav Klimt Destroyed by fire in Schloss Immendorf in 1945. In 1894, Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch received a commission to create a series of paintings that were to be installed on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the New University of Vienna. Eleven years later,…

  • Peleliu as a paradigm for PTSD: The two thousand yard stare

    Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States   “I noticed a tattered marine…staring stiffly at nothing. His mind had crumbled in battle…his eyes were like two black empty holes in his head…Last evening he came down out of the hills. Told to get some sleep, he found a shell crater and slumped into it…First light has…