April, 2021 - Hektoen International

Justine Siegemund, opening doorways to midwifery

April 21, 2021

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of Justine Siegemund by Georg Paul Busch. 1690-1756 (circa). © The Trustees of the British Museum CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 In the mid-1600s, midwife Justine Siegemund was a household name for mothers in Silesia, part of modern-day Poland. She served patients of every class in Legnica, in Berlin, and […]

Book review: A Place in History: The Biography of John C. Kendrew

April 21, 2021

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of A Place in History: The Biography of John C. Kendrew by Paul M. Wassarman. Remarkable scientific advances in the twentieth century were also crucial for the field of medicine. In the new field of molecular biology, for example, scientists applied the principles of physics and chemistry […]

Guidelines for the 2021 Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Competition

April 20, 2021

THE HEKTOEN INTERNATIONAL 2021 GRAND PRIX CLOSED SEPTEMBER 15th, 2021 AT 12PM (NOON). We invite you to participate in the 2021 Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Competition in honor of Hektoen Institute Board Member Mrs. Hella Mannheimer (1924-2020). Two prizes will be awarded: $5,000 for the winner and $2,500 for the runner-up. Please read the instructions […]

Somerset Maugham

April 16, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Somerset Maugham by Graham Sutherland, black chalk, pencil and gouache, 1953. NPG 5327 I have two professions, not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress; when I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. -Anton Chekov, 1888 As a graduate […]

The two doctors

April 13, 2021

In the crowded center of an ancient city with churches and minarets, with fragrant spices and fluttering chickens for sale, there practiced two friends who finished medical school in the same year. The one who had graduated at the bottom of the class had a huge practice. The one who came first had very few […]

The old ice box

April 13, 2021

A popular doctor once had in his office an old icebox that had long ceased to fulfill the function for which it had been created. It was disconnected from electrical power but spacious enough to allow a person to sit in it. The physician would tell his worried, well patients that this was an X-ray […]

The last iron lungs

April 12, 2021

Charles Halsted Davis, California, United States This photograph depicts an opened Emerson respirator, also known as an iron lung. Photo by Jim Gathany. Via CDC/ GHO/ Mary Hilpertshauser. Public Domain. Source In the springtime of my internship year, I rotated onto the polio ward where I learned that poliomyelitis could kill by paralyzing the […]

Pursuing “conclusions infinite”: The divine inspiration of Georg Cantor

April 12, 2021

Sylvia Karasu New York, New York, United States Georg Cantor, German mathematician, 1845–1918. Cantor as an older man, date unknown. Cantor was not quite age 73 when he died of heart failure. Photo Credit: Colport/Alamy Stock Photo. Used with permission. There is a “fine line between brilliance and madness”: the distinction, for example, between […]

Our celiac boarder

April 12, 2021

Charles Halsted Davis, California, United States Inflammation of the intestinal mucosa may lead to villous atrophy of the small intestine. 2018. Scientific Animations. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0 I listened with care to her history of weight loss, grain aversion, abdominal cramps, and frequent diarrhea. Her great-grandfather was an early California settler who had […]

COVID-19 and 1665: Learning from Daniel Defoe

April 12, 2021

Brian Birch Southampton, Hampshire, UK London plague victims being buried in 1665, one of nine scenes from John Dunstall’s Plague broadsheet (1666). Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is an account of the 1665 Great Plague of London. Based on eyewitness experience, the undersigned initials “H. F.” […]