Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Blood

  • The wrong geographical timeline

    Riddhi NaikBambolim, India It was just another day in medical school. I was posted in the postnatal ward on a bright, sunny March morning. The ward was filled with young mothers full of hope and love for their newborns. Spring was in full bloom- both… Read more

  • Hortus Sanitatis (1491): The Garden of Health

    Christopher DuffinLondon, England The Hortus Sanitatis was published in Mainz (western central Germany) on June 23, 1491 by Jacob Meydenbach (fl. fifteenth century).1 In the forty years or so since Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1393–1406–1468) first invented printing using movable type, the industry had undergone many… Read more

  • Uganda, the Pearl of Africa

    Winston Churchill described this landlocked East African country as the “Pearl of Africa.” Archaeological evidence shows that humans have lived there for at least 50,000 years and that, over millennia, Bantu-speaking cultivators gradually cleared forests, introduced ironworking, and established stable agricultural communities. By the first… Read more

  • Kenya: Progress on a long road

    With a population exceeding 50 million and more than 40 distinct ethnic communities, Kenya stands as one of Africa’s most diverse countries. Its history stretches back to some of humanity’s earliest ancestors, with fossil discoveries in the Rift Valley suggesting the region played a key… Read more

  • Self-experimentation

    Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Scientists have conducted experiments on themselves on many occasions for a variety of reasons.1,2 Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for discovering human blood groups. He found it convenient and economical to carry… Read more

  • Bigotry is a public health issue

    Ali AbdullahKansas City, Missouri, United States Bigotry affects the health of nations. This is exemplified in Germany, where in the early 1900s roughly 50% of Berlin’s1 physicians were Jewish, as were 70% of doctors in Vienna1 and 16% in Prussia.2 After the ascent of the… Read more

  • A millennium of medical care in Kyiv

    Kyiv, one of Europe’s oldest cities, became the capital of Kyivan Rus, a powerful medieval state that united the Slavs living along the Dnipro River trade routes. After the adoption of Christianity in 988, Byzantine ideas about healing, charity, and hospital care entered the region… Read more

  • Elisha Perkins and his metallic tractors

    Xavier NesbitHobart, Australia In the closing years of the eighteenth century, a Connecticut country doctor named Elisha Perkins (1741-1799) produced one of early America’s strangest medical devices. In the process, he also unwittingly gave medicine one of its first clinical trials. Perkins, who had served… Read more

  • Two different kinds of odd speech: In schizophrenia and in poetry

    William TuckerNew York, New York, United States Understanding the odd speech of people with schizophrenia has generally been considered, by psychiatrists and the public alike, both futile and pointless. Often enigmatic and sometimes threatening, it has long been assumed that such speech results from disordered… Read more

  • Harken, Ibsen, and the birth of the Intensive Care Unit

    Kevin LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States When one reflects on the landmark advances of medicine in the 20th century, there is no shortage of achievements. The introduction of antibiotics, the use of numerous vaccines, organ transplantation, the multimodality treatment of cancers, the understanding of the genetic basis… Read more

  • The Horn of Africa

    The Horn of Africa points into the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean, resembling a rhinoceros horn. It consists of four nations: Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. It also includes the partially recognized state of Somaliland. A broader definition of the Horn would… Read more

  • Book Review of Signals: The Inside Story of Our Hormones

    Arpan K Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom In Signals, the endocrinologist Saira Hameed writes about a range of interesting patients seen in her clinic. Clinical stories are interwoven with snippets from the history of endocrinology, including pioneers and early experimenters. Diseases caused by an imbalance of… Read more