Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Month: November 2019

  • Lucas van Leyden: Ear surgery

    This surgeon is shown operating on the ear of a young man in an environment quite different from a modern surgical suite. He may be merely lancing a boil, but his patient looks unhappy. It is also obvious from their clothes that there is quite a difference in class between the two. With his fur…

  • The village surgeon

    This painting, titled Village Surgeon, is rich in layers and details. In the center of the image the surgeon, quite likely a barber-surgeon, scrapes carefully at the skin of his patient. In the background, a workbench is covered in instruments, two other figures examine potential remedies, a broom is knocked over as if to indicate…

  • Primitive surgery

    This 14th century woodcut from the Ashmolean Museum offers a view of what a surgeon’s office looked like at that time. We can see the patient, with boils, welts, or wounds peppering his skin, attended by the surgeon. On the far left a woman stands ready to assist. She holds some kind of a tool…

  • Litmus paper and other pH indicators

    To many a physician the word litmus brings back unpleasant memories from medical school, something to do with Bunsen burners, incomprehensible lectures on acid-base balance, or experiments going wrong and exploding in the chemistry lab. Litmus itself is a mixture of organic substances obtained from lichens and used as an acid-base indicator—even in nature, such…

  • Lady Mary Wortley Montague: Variolation against smallpox

    Born in 1689, Lady Mary Wortley Montague was the most colorful Englishwoman of her time—an eccentric aristocrat, writer, and poet. In 1715 while still a young woman, her beauty was marred by a severe attack of smallpox. She had eloped in 1710 rather than accept an arranged marriage, and in 1715 her husband became British…

  • Staining the cells of the nervous system

    Camillo Golgi (1843 –1926) was an Italian biologist and pathologist, now recognized as the greatest neuroscientist of his time. He studied and worked at the University of Pavia, where he developed a technique of using potassium dichromate and silver nitrate to stain cellular components black. Using this stain he was able to discover the organelle now known as the Golgi apparatus, consisting…

  • Half-skull

    Sophia WilsonNew Zealand a ghost shrieks at the window,threatens to break through,shatter eye-cover. throbbing fingers infiltratesoft crevices;neuronal mass pulsates. knife twists, gristle-turning;stoat gnaw,rat’s claw. mind summersaults tosnap-trap pain,can’t let go its axon’s branch. cerebral crevices convolute;razorsreplace thoughts. vessel spasm,vision tremble;light jars, sound breaks, eye inverts andnausea heaveslike tidal rise. intention leacher,sight imploder,plan thwarter, work blighter.…

  • Camus, Meursault, and the Biopsychosocial model

    Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York Since the development of medical literature studies in the 1970s, the field has grown and expanded in many fascinating ways.1 For example, courses in medical schools now encourage students to examine their own biases and emotional responses, and medical literature scholars emphasize the educational and clinical value of learning to…

  • Scurvy before James Lind

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Cures of disease are still relatively uncommon. Scurvy is an example of a disease well recognized but whose cause eluded doctors for centuries until an empirical curative remedy and later a specific cause were discovered. In more recent times Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in phthisis or consumption in 1882,…

  • Origins of the Pap smear

    When Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou brought his wife to America in 1913 he had $250 in his pocket. Both had to take menial jobs, she as a seamstress, he as a rug salesman, violin player in a restaurant, and clerk at a Greek newspaper. A year later, he obtained a position as laboratory technician at Cornell…