Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Blood

  • Blood debt

    Jules ReichChicago, Illinois, United States In 1937, the first U.S. blood bank opened in Chicago. It was originally called a Blood Preservation Laboratory, but its founder, Dr. Bernard Fantus, changed the name to blood bank. For someone who spent a large part of his exceptional career working on ways to make medicine taste better for…

  • Blood type and personality

    Nonoko KamaiNagoya, Japan Why do Japanese people believe in a relationship between blood type and personality? Beginning in the 1970s, the blood type personality hypothesis became fashionable in Japan and it is still popular today.5 A women’s magazine focusing on the topic once sold seven billion copies and there are still fortune telling books based…

  • Bloody segregation: The story of how Charles Richard Drew found life abundantly

    Amy DeMattGreensburg, Pennsylvania, United States “Desperation, weakness, vulnerability – these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.”— Zadie Smith What if, instead of simply practicing empathy, you could literally become a part of someone else? What if you could join a part of…

  • Blood beliefs and practices in Iran

    Bahar DowlatshahiTehrann, Iran Blood is believed to have special abilities and properties in many eastern countries such as Iran. Even human personality traits, emotions, and relationships are referred to with blood. Angry people boil their blood; those who are kind and loving are called warm-blooded. In the tradition of some tribes, a stranger can be…

  • All blood runs red

    Mel DiomampoHouston, TX The American Red Cross (ARC) is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and other disasters. Based on the Geneva Convention of 1949, its work primarily consists of responding to emergencies, promoting international humanitarian law, and implementing it. Red Cross Stimulated by the global Red…

  • Traditional circumcision in South Africa

    Ntombi KgosanaPhenyo MontshoPretoria, South Africa Traditional circumcision is an ancient and highly secretive practice that serves as a rite of passage and a gateway to manhood in South Africa. It draws hundreds of young men annually, with an array of sacred rituals that affirm masculinity and social responsibility. Known as Ulwaluko in the Xhosa culture,…

  • Experimental evidence for the humoral circulatory system

    Mark A. Gray Kansas City, Kansas Humoralism, otherwise known as Hellenistic or Galenic medicine, posited the existence of four humors that were required to be kept in balance to maintain health. Blood was special among these humors, believed to deliver both physical and spiritual nourishment to the body.1 To a modern scientist, the physiology ancient Greek…

  • Bloodletting and the treatment of menstrual disorders in early modern England

    Rhianna ElliottCambridgeshire, United Kingdom Bloodletting, also known as “phlebotomy,” was a common preventive and therapeutic medical practice in early modern England. Its theoretical foundation was in humorism, the ancient medical system where bodily health depended on the balance between four fluid humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile). Yet even amongst lay people with…

  • Anne McLaren, transfusion, transplantation, and the nature of blood

    Matthew HolmesCambridge, UK Anne McLaren, Oxford-trained zoologist and first female Officer of the Royal Society, once claimed that “History may be circular, but the history of science is helical: it repeats itself, but each time at a deeper level.”1 To see the helical nature of the history of science in action, we need look no…

  • The leech makes a comeback

    Meryl SigatonCity of Silay, Philippines Leeches (hirudo medicinalis) are invertebrates of the phylum Annelida whose main diet is blood. They are hermaphrodites and carnivorous, having 700 species that thrive in a variety of environments. Most of them are small, weighing less than 1–1.5 g before feeding, but some may reach a length of twelve centimeters.…