Month: November 2018
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Maurice Ravel’s neurologic disease
The French composer Maurice Ravel appears to have suffered from a localized neurological disease that spared higher brain functions but interfered with the basic activities of living. In neurological parlance this translates itself into loss of the ability to speak (aphasia), write (agraphia), read (alexia), or carry out complex brain directed movements or tasks (apraxia).…
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Oliver Cromwell’s illnesses and death
Many accounts of Cromwell’s health are unreliable and biased because they were written by royalists. What can be discerned, however, is that in London in 1628 at the age of twenty-nine, Cromwell consulted the greatest doctor of the day, Sir Theodore Mayerne, whose records indicate that he had excessive cough and phlegm, some digestive problems,…
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Sergei Rachmaninov, the pianist with very big hands
Sergei Rachmaninov, the famous Russian composer, pianist, and composer, was born in 1873 into a family that descended from the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great. At age four he began piano lessons and already displayed remarkable talent. He was sent to study music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when ten years old, and, upon being…
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Alexander Borodin, the polymath who composed Prince Igor (1833–1887)
Alexander Borodin is remembered for his magnum opus, the great opera Prince Igor, which tells of the Kiev prince Igor Svyatoslavich fighting against the invading Turkic tribes known as Cumans, Kipchaks, or Polovtsians. He worked on the opera for seventeen years and left it unfinished because, in 1887, while attending a costumed ball, he slumped…
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Past Winners
Hektoen International honors the winners and runners up of the Hektoen Grand Prix essay contests 2018 Abigail Cline, Winner Tales from the crypt: the mosaic symbolism of Louis Pasteur’s tomb Jack Coulehan, Runner-Up The Education of Doctor Chekhov Alida Rol, Runner-Up “Mississippi Appendectomy” and other stories: when silence is complicity 2017 Anika Khan, Winner – Essay Locked-in…
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Campbell de Morgan (1811-1876)
Bust of Campbell De Morgan, presented to the Middlesex Hospital by John Graham Lough Described as a man of great accomplishment and unusual ability, Campbell de Morgan was a surgeon and a professor at the Middlesex Hospital in London. His main interest was neoplasia, and he participated in the debate on whether cancer arises locally…
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The treasure trove of memory
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Olive Tree with Pansies, Loutraki, Greece Memory, the ability to recall at will previous events and various facts, is a precious mental faculty, an asset that underpins learning, knowledge, and experience in any field of human endeavor. In medicine its value is undeniable, though for legal as well as…
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Korotkov’s Sound
Joseph deBettencourt Chicago, Illinois, United States A portrait of Nikolai Sergeevich Korotkov I’m watching, knees bending, Looking meek, my heart quiet, Drifting away are the shadows Of fussy world affairs While I’m envisioning, dreaming of voices from other worlds -Aleksandr Blok, untitled poem, July 3, 1901a Stepping off the train in northern…
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“I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat”: the complicated history of American food aid
Joy Liu Rochester, Minnesota Harvest, Joy Liu. 2008 Private collection Every afternoon after preschool, I would crisscross the maze of stolid Beijing apartments to collect a jar of fresh suan nai. Equal parts sweet, tangy, and savory, the fermented milk drink was a favorite I usually devoured as soon as the elderly peddler handed…
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Sir William Gull, polymath and pioneer physician
William Gull (1816-1890) is remembered by nephrologists as one of the prominent Guy’s Hospital physicians who worked to extend the seminal observations first made by Richard Bright. These investigators worked at a time when blood measurements were not available in clinical medicine and the role of hypertension in causing disease was not appreciated. They tried…