September, 2018 - Hektoen International

The story of chocolate

September 27, 2018

Merve Berber Ankara, Turkey An Aztec woman generates foam by pouring chocolate from one vessel to another From the Codex Tudela Chocolatl, meaning “bitter water,” was the earliest form of chocolate. It was a beverage that contained the seed of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) and was consumed by the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations of […]

Unlocking the secrets of longevity: the potential of Cannonau

September 27, 2018

Samuele Cannas Pisa, Italy Bunch of Cannonau Grapes Ampélographie Viala et Vermorel “O gentlemen, the time of life is short! / To spend that shortness basely were too long, / If life did ride upon a dial’s point, / Still ending at the arrival of an hour.” – William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part […]

The health food crusade and the super-food saint: exploring the discourse of healthy eating

September 27, 2018

Alice Ryrie Manchester, United Kingdom Fig 1. Baptism (Purity), 2015 In our increasingly secular society, the value of health is rising. Moral values that used to be dominated by religion are now a matter of health: “in many ways the church has been replaced by the gymnasium.”1 Due to the rising pressure to be […]

Food colors: a history of food in art and literature

September 27, 2018

Sayantu Basu Kolkata, West Bengal, India The Colors of Feast: Still Life with Fruits, Nuts and Cheese Floris van Dijck, Frans Hals Museum, Harleem, Netherlands “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.” This is how Voltaire upholds the significance […]

“It’s vinegar saved her”: folk medicine, food, and the flu in A Time of Angels

September 27, 2018

Rachel Conrad Bracken Rootstown, Ohio, USA The “D.I.Y. Bragg Apple Cider Drink,” a mixture of water, vinegar, and a natural sweetener, like honey, is “important to the Bragg Healthy Lifestyle.” The publication of Karen Hesse’s young adult novel, A Time of Angels (1997), coincides with a renewed interest in the history of the 1918–1919 […]

Tales out of medical school

September 27, 2018

Charles H. Halsted Davis, California, USA University of Rochester School of Medicine, 1958 In first-year anatomy class, I shared a rectangular metal table with three other twenty-one-year-old men and our assigned corpse, a blank-eyed, obese, and lifeless white seventyish woman. Half of my classmates were former Eastern prep school boys, the others mostly Jewish […]

Jan Steen: quack doctors visit lovesick maidens

September 26, 2018

Like his contemporary Molière, the Dutchman Jan Steen makes fun of quack doctors, often shown in ridiculous costumes visiting young love-sick or pregnant women. In the Lovesick Maiden (Fig.1, Metropolitan Museum) the diagnosis is suggested by the painting of a Cupid above the door, the bed on the right, and the bed-warmer on the lower […]

The arrival of the black horse

September 25, 2018

Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States Four horsemen of Apocalypse (1887) by Viktor Vasnetsov When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something […]

Anatomy plates: more shocking than useful

September 24, 2018

Jacques Fabien Gautier D’Agoty (1716–1785) was born in Marseilles and learned color printing in Frankfurt while working for Jacob Christoph Le Blond, the man who had invented this process. Perhaps anticipating his later conduct, D’Agoty claimed after Le Blond’s death to have made this invention himself. Moving to Paris in 1736, he had the idea […]