November, 2021 - Hektoen International

Charles Valentin Alkan

November 15, 2021

Charles-Henri Valentin Morhange was a precocious child who played the piano at the age of five and gave his first public performance at seven. He was the second of six children of an old Ashkenazi family that for centuries had lived near the town of Metz in Alsace. Born in Paris in 1813, he later […]

“God Helps Them That Help Themselves”: Poor Richard and the inoculation controversy

November 12, 2021

Stewart Justman Missoula, Montana, United States Poor Richard, 1739. An Almanack for the Year of Christ 1739. Benjamin Franklin Library of Congress Rare Book & Special Collections Division. Via Wikimedia. Before vaccination there was inoculation, and long before opposition to vaccination for Covid-19 there was furious resistance to the practice of inoculating for smallpox. […]

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

November 12, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Credit: Walery, published by Sampson Low & Co. in February 1889. Via Wikimedia. Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson were the first women physicians in the United States and Britain.1 Both were born in England. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-I9I0) was born in Bristol but […]

Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte: tradition, assimilation, and healing

November 12, 2021

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Fig 1. Susan La Flesche Picotte. 1889. Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center Archives & Special Collections. Published with permission. “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night.” — Susan LaFlesche Picotte1 It was August of 1889 and Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte […]

Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann and Der Struwwelpeter

November 12, 2021

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Heinrich Hoffmann: The Struwwelpeter; Frankfurt am Main: Literary Institute Rütten & Loening, 1917 (400th edition); Copy of the Braunschweig University Library Call number: 2007-0968. Via Wikimedia. “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.” — B.F. Skinner Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) was a general practitioner in Frankfurt. […]

Franz Joseph Gall and phrenology

November 5, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Franz Joseph Gall. By Zéphirin Félix Jean Marius Belliard. Via Wikimedia. For many reasons the work of Gall, when stripped of its excrescences, constituted an important landmark in the history of neurology. -Macdonald Critchley4 In the times of Galen, the location of the mind and spirit […]

John Hunter, his wolf dogs, and the inherited smiles of Pomeranians

November 5, 2021

Stephen Martin United Kingdom Fig 1. Title of Hunter’s Royal Society wolf dogs paper. © Author, from original, CC-BY 4.0 John Hunter, 1728-1793, was a polymathic doctor. Besides being an anatomist and clinician, he was also interested in early genetics, exemplified by his “Observations tending to shew that the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog, are […]

Healing in the face of cultural devastation

November 4, 2021

Patrick Flynn Los Angeles, California, United States Portrait of Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree. Source. In 1855, a young Crow boy, no more than ten years old, ventured to the top of a mountain in present-day Montana. Over the next two decades, the boy would rise […]

Rudolf Virchow and the anthropology of race

November 4, 2021

Friedrich C. Luft Detlev Ganten Berlin, Germany Fig. 1. Rudolf Virchow as anthropologist. Portrait by Hanns Fechner (1891). Rudolf Virchow, born in 1821, was arguably the most important German physician, biologist, social scientist, and anthropologist of the nineteenth century. His establishment of cellular pathology is known by all and his comment that “politics is […]

“On Being Sane in Insane Places”¹: psychiatric hospitalization as seen by Gabriel García Márquez and Dr. David Rosenhan

November 4, 2021

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Crowded bedroom at Brooklyn State Hospital. World Telegram & Sun photo by Dick De Marsico. 1961. Library of Congress. No known copyright restriction. Literature and science may complement each other. Sometimes they actually describe the same phenomenon. Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was a Colombian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. He […]