Month: September 2025
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Mencken: Medical
Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956), the caustic “Sage of Baltimore,” earned lasting fame as journalist, critic, and satirist. Best remembered for The American Language (1919 and its subsequent expansions), his multi-volume study of how Americans shaped English, Mencken also trained his sharp gaze on medicine, physicians, and the very words of health and disease. Though he…
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Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) occupies a unique and often controversial place in American literature. Best remembered for his unflinching realism, his exploration of ambition, desire, and social constraint, and his massive, detail-laden novels, Dreiser was both acclaimed and censured during his lifetime. His works, particularly Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), stand as landmark…
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W. Somerset Maugham: Medical
William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) is remembered primarily as a master of the short story and as a novelist whose lucid style made him one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. Yet beneath his literary reputation lies another identity: that of a trained physician. Medicine was not just a stage in Maugham’s…
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Victor Hugo: Medical
Victor Hugo (1802–1885), towering figure of French Romanticism, is remembered primarily for his vast literary achievements—Les Misérables, Notre-Dame de Paris, and countless poems that gave voice to the downtrodden and the exiled. Yet, woven into his life and works are subtle but significant medical threads. His experiences with illness, his compassion for the suffering poor,…
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The botched autopsy of president John F. Kennedy
Adrian HernandezNoel BrownleeBlacksburg, Virginia The forensic autopsy of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was full of mistakes that gave rise to subsequent controversies. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, during an official visit to Dallas, Texas. He was in the right seat of an open car accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy, Texas Governor John…
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Herman Melville: Medical
Herman Melville (1819–1891), best remembered for his monumental novel Moby-Dick, was a writer whose life and work were profoundly shaped by medical themes. Although he is often placed within the canon of American Romanticism, Melville’s writings reveal not only philosophical and theological concerns but also a deep engagement with the body, illness, and the medical…
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“The pissing evil” before insulin
JMS PearceHull, England There are many excellent descriptions of the history of diabetes, and of the nineteenth- and particularly twentieth-century discoveries of the secretion of insulin by the beta cells of the pancreatic islets of Langerhans.1,2 (See Table) However, the earlier history of diabetes is less known. The Egyptian papyrus (c. 1550 BC) discovered by…
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Childbirth’s hidden revolution: The origins of obstetric forceps
Mariam BanoubMatthew HillJulius BonelloPeoria, Illinois, United States The Chamberlen family of barber-surgeons had a secret, an invention unknown to anyone else at the time. They protected this invention at all costs, even when it cost a human life. To ensure their secrecy, they always arrived at a patient’s home in a highly decorated carriage. Assistants…
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Leukemia: White blood
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Leukemia may have afflicted humans as long as 7,000 years ago,1 but it was not diagnosed until the middle of the nineteenth century. Successful treatment would not be available for another 100 years. Peter Cullen described “splenitis acutus” with milky blood in 1811, and Alfred Armand Louis Marie Velpeau identified…
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The attempted poisoning of Pope John XXII in 1317
Christopher DuffinLondon, England Rome was the traditional home of the papacy, but tension with the French crown (Philip IV, 1268–1314) led to a move to Avignon, then in the Kingdom of Arles, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1309. The second (and longest reigning) of the seven Avignon popes was Pope John…