November, 2021 - Hektoen International

Béla Bartók (1881-1945): The years in America, triumph over tragedy

November 30, 2021

James L. Franklin George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States Fig 1. Béla Bartók in 1927. Unknown Photographer. Via Wikimedia. Black clouds of war were hanging over the world when Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory (1903-1982) disembarked in New York Harbor on October 30, 1940. For the remainder of his life, Bartók would […]

Indo-European for health professionals

November 22, 2021

Logo of the Asiatic Society of Bengal depicting Sir William Jones. 1905. Via Wikimedia. The Indo-Europeans were a group of people whose language is presumed to be the ancestor of most modern languages spoken in Europe and in parts of Asia. They left behind almost no tangible evidence of their existence other than some funeral […]

Book review: Medicine in the Middle Ages

November 19, 2021

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Medicine in the Middle Ages by Juliana Cummings. In the history of Western Europe, the Middle Ages refers to the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century through the beginning of the Renaissance in the 1500s. These thousand years were characterized […]

Depiction of defecation in the works of Pieter Bruegel

November 19, 2021

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Two behinds out the same window. Detail from Netherlandish Proverbs (The Blue Cloak). Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1559. Gemäldegalerie. Via Wikimedia. “Civilization rests upon two things – the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and the voluntary ability to inhibit defecation.” —Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels The life of the peasant […]

O Superman

November 19, 2021

John Rasko Carl Power Sydney, Australia Christopher Reeve comes to South Park to demonstrate all the hope and horror of embryonic stem cells. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, “Krazy Kripples,” South Park, season 7, episode 2 (2003). The creation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 sparked enormous excitement.1 The superpower that embryos possess—the […]

Paul Pierre Broca

November 18, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Paul Pierre Broca. US National Library of Medicine. At the turn of the nineteenth century, knowledge of how the brain worked was largely conjectural. Intelligence, memory, language, and motor and sensory functions had not been localized. The physiologist Flourens, promoting the notion of “cerebral equipotentiality,” concluded, […]

Theodor Meynert

November 18, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Theodor Meynert. Photo by Ludwig Angerer. Before 1880. Via Wikimedia. Theodor Meynert (1833-1892) (Fig 1) was an eminent if eccentric neuropathologist and psychiatrist. His original work had an impact not just on medicine but on the philosophy of the mind and the “history of materialism.”1 Modern […]

Guadalupe: One of Spain’s oldest schools of medicine

November 18, 2021

Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. The Monastery of Guadalupe. Main entrance. Photo by Rafa G. Recuero. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 ES. Guadalupe, a small Spanish town in the district of Cáceres, Extremadura, arose around a monastery. Legend says that a shepherd named Gil Cordero was looking for a stray sheep when […]

Metastases

November 18, 2021

A CXR of a person with lung cancer causing superior vena cava syndrome. Photo by James Heilman, MD. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States The fact Is they are there, gathered like a clutter of popcorn, some kernels, others fluffy white swirls, but they are there, bound to […]

Volume 13 Special Issue – Fall 2021

November 16, 2021

Hektoen International is pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Grand Prix Essay Competition. Winner: C. Louis Leipoldt: The polymath physician and literary giant, Stephen Marcus Finn Runner-Up: “Plague of the Sea, and the Spoyle of Mariners”—A brief history of fermented cabbage as antiscorbutic, Richard de Grijs Honorable Mentions Women surgeons, Moustapha […]