Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Andreas Vesalius

  • Erik Waller the book collector

    Anna LantzStockholm, Sweden Erik Waller (1875–1955) was a Swedish surgeon and book collector who spent most of his professional life in Lidköping, a small town in the southwest of Sweden. He received his medical education in Uppsala and Stockholm before moving to Lidköping in 1909, where he was offered a position as acting hospital doctor.…

  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Statue of Copernicus, Warsaw, Poland. Photo by Arpan K. Banerjee. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 Feb 1473 in the Prussian town of Torun, now part of Poland. He studied at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, and although his main subjects were mathematics and astronomy, he…

  • Handmaidens of anatomy

    Elisabeth BranderSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Some of the most well-known images in the history of anatomy are the woodcut écorché figures that appear in Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543. Rather than lying inert on a dissection table, they stride boldly through a pastoral landscape as if still alive, showing their…

  • Between Vesalius and the CAT scan

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Scribe: noun. A person who copies documents, especially a person who made handwritten copies before the invention of printing.— Dictionary.com The first reliable anatomic drawings based on human dissections may have been those of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519). Later, Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), born in Brussels as Andries van Wesel and having taken a…

  • A brief history of kidney transplantation

    Laura Carreras-Planella Marcella Franquesa Ricardo Lauzurica Francesc E. Borràs Barcelona, Spain   We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated…

  • A sporting end to Henry II, King of France

    Julius P. Bonello Adam Awwad Peoria, Illinois, United States   Henry II. Source Since the first wheel rolled out of the mouth of a cave, sports have been a staple in our social fabric. From throwing balls to picking up sticks, from tug-of-war to wrestling, from chess to football, and from horse racing to car…

  • Bartolomeo Eustachio of the Anatomical Trinity

    The tube connecting the inner ear to the throat that may become painfully blocked during a plane landing was described in the sixteenth century by Bartolomeo Eustachi—more often known by his Latin name of Eustachio.1 He constituted, along with Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) and Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562), the Anatomical Trinity from which the modern science of…

  • Bibliotheca Sibbaldiana

    Colin McDowall Edinburgh, Scotland   Figure 1: Sir Robert Sibbald by Willem Verelst or John Alexander. Photo credit: Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh On 5 February 1723 a crowd gathered at the house of the late Sir Robert Sibbald, noted Edinburgh physician, for the auction of his personal library. Sibbald was a considerable collector…

  • Harvard medical school and the body snatchers

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, USA   Figure 1: Woodcut illustration from Fasciculus medicinae (1491) depicting a Lector, Ostensor, and Sector during a dissection Their silhouettes surely would have been seen against the backdrop of a moonlit night in 1796 as they entered the North Burying Ground in Boston. Their hearts were likely filled with…

  • Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library

    Anna Lantz Sweden   Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library September 28, 2011 Anders Johan Hagströmer (1753–1830) was one of Sweden’s leading anatomists and a student of Linnaeus. A cofounder of both the Swedish Society of Medicine and of the Karolinska Institute,1 he was also a collector of medical and scientific books, which he donated to the library…