Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: July 2019

  • Henry Gray and his textbook of anatomy

    The Gods of Anatomy must have loved Henry Gray, for like swift-footed Achilles he died young and achieved immortality among men. Using a pen, not a sword, he authored a massive textbook of anatomy, first published in 1858. Like its equally voluminous competitor produced by Daniel John Cunningham in 1902, his book has been viewed…

  • Adrianus Spigelius, the last great Paduan anatomist

    In his time the Flemish physician Adrianne van den Spiegel (often referred to by the latinized name of Adrianus Spigelius) was the most renowned practicing clinician in the city of Padua. An accomplished anatomist, he was left with only meager eponymous pickings: the caudate (Spigelian) lobe of the liver and some more obscure structures around…

  • “Some little show of nail”: the health of Anne Boleyn

    Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States   Anne Boleyn. Unknown English artist. Late 16th century, based on a work of circa 1533-1536. National Portrait Gallery. Of all the wives of England’s King Henry VIII, the most well known is Anne Boleyn. She is the woman who, one way or another, caused the split between Henry…

  • In full retreat

    Cyndy Muscatel Lake Sherwood, California, United States   Advertisement for the “Acousticon”, the first portable electric hearing aid, invented by Miller Reese Hutchison. circa 1902. From page 48 in “Surdus in search of his hearing: an exposure of aural quacks and a guide to genuine treatments and remedies electrical aids, lip-reading and employments for the…

  • Tooth extraction in art: from the dental key to the forceps

    Vicent RodillaAlicia López-CastellanoChristina Ribes-VallésValencia, Spain Tooth extraction has been practiced for centuries, being carried out first by often itinerant barber-surgeons, and, once the profession became regulated in the late 1800s, by licenced dentists. Hippocrates gives one of the oldest written accounts of tooth extraction, which he considered along with cauterization to be a remedial measure…

  • The story of a scar

    Michael Ellman Wilmette, Illinois, United States   Needle and thread stitching up a wound, artwork. By Mary Rouncefield. CC BY-NC The six-inch scar is high over my left femoral artery in my inner thigh. It is healing well now and is pain free. The scar marks the place where a vascular surgeon extracted a clot…

  • Duchenne de Boulogne

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, England   Fig 1. Duchenne examining facial muscles of expression. [From Mècanisme de la physionomie Humaine (1862)] The eponymous Duchenne muscular dystrophy still provokes a sense of sadness in afflicted families and therapeutic impotence in their medical attendants. Although both Edward Meryon (1852) and Wilhelm Griesinger (1865) published early case reports,…

  • Joseph Bell and Conan Doyle

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, England   Fig 1. Arthur Conan Doyle. University of Manitoba, Archives Special Collections “…The remarkable individuality and discriminating tact of my old master made a deep and lasting impression on me, though I had not the faintest idea that it would one day lead me to forsake medicine for story writing.”…

  • Block

    Tuhina Raman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   The Journey Inwards by Dr. Nikhil Meena The lateral chest is the easel for my handiwork. I paint an orange sheen that glints off my patient’s chest as I prep and drape in standard sterile fashion. Round and round, from the center to the periphery. Once, twice—the third…

  • Johann Conrad Brunner and his work on the pancreas

    In the history of medicine, the Swiss anatomist and physician Johann Conrad Brunner is more often remembered for discovering the glands in the duodenal mucosa than for his experiments on the pancreas. Though able to surgically induce at least transient diabetes mellitus in dogs, he failed to make a connection between the pancreas and diabetes,…