Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Romania

  • Epidemic encephalitis lethargica

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Table 1. QUARANTINABLE DISEASES Cholera Diphtheria Infectious tuberculosis Plague Smallpox Yellow fever Viral hemorrhagic fevers Severe acute respiratory syndromes Influenza pandemic From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Legal authorities for isolation and quarantine. Source The pandemic Covid-19 infection, first reported from China in December 2019, reminds us…

  • Dead people healing alcoholism

    Maria BarnaSibiu, Romania In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many villages in the Moldavia region of Romania where doctors hardly ever came. When people became ill they found hope in prayers or in the secret knowledge of initiated women. Thus the treatment of alcoholism was based on empirical and magical medicine.…

  • Medical art from the Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, Romania

    Alexandru Sonoc Sibiu, Romania   Several works in the European collection of the Brukenthal National Museum are of interest to the history of medicine. Most of them are works by Dutch and Flemish painters, mainly from the 17th-century: The Summer by Jakob Jordaens, The Trapped Peasant by Adriaen van der Venne, The Bloodletting and The…

  • Paracelsus: physician and alchemist

    Alexandru Gh. Sonoc Sibiu, Romania   Paracelsus, 1935 F. Görtitz. Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania. This painting shows the famous alchemist and physician Paracelsus holding a retort in his hands and standing in front of a furnace on which is placed a glass balloon. In front of the furnace a pair of bellows lie on…