Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Physicians of Note

  • John Abernethy

    John Abernethy was born in London in 1764 and went to school in Wolverhampton, where he learned Latin and Greek, and graduated top of his class. He would have preferred to study law but his father insisted he choose medicine. At age fifteen, he was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon with a large,…

  • William Osler

    It is good to review periodically the lives of famous men lest they be forgotten by new generations. In medicine few people have been the subject of more books, articles, and reviews then Sir William Osler. He has been called the father of modern medicine. He was the “compleat” physician, a scientist and humanist, and…

  • Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom 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 moved with her family to New York when aged eleven. Only after twelve medical schools rejected her did she manage…

  • Johannes Jacob Wepfer (1620-1695)

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom The eminent physician Johannes Jakob Wepfer (1620-1695) was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, on the right bank of the Rhine. Little is written of his early years but the child Wepfer may have gazed and wondered about Schaffhausen’s countryside, its many oriel windows, and the rounded Munot fortress designed by Albrecht…

  • Joseph Škoda (1805–1881)

    Medicine in Vienna developed in two distinct phases.1-3 The first began in 1745 when Empress Maria Theresa on the advice of Herman Boerhaave4 invited Gerard van Swieten5 to become her personal physician. She also appointed him in charge of medical education, thus creating what became the illustrious First Vienna School of Medicine.1-3 This phase lasted until the…

  • Beloved physicians: Three unsung heroes

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States Few doctors, especially those who practice in small communities across the land, are remembered for their selfless, unstinting devotion to their patients. They are not considered heroes in the usual sense and sadly, for the most part, are now replaced by dehumanizing corporate medicine. The general practitioner or “GP”…

  • The Pearl of the Orient: the persistence of Dr. Wu Lien-teh

    Ku Ezriq Raif bin Ku BesryPerlis, Malaysia The work of Wu Lien-teh in controlling the 1910 Manchurian Plague has been celebrated as “a milestone in the systematic practice of epidemiological principles in disease control.” The cloth face mask he developed, “the principal means of personal protection”1 during the outbreak, was a significant contribution to the…

  • Erik Jorpes: from Kökar to Helsingfors, Moscow, and Stockholm

    Frank A. WollheimLund, Sweden Johan Erik Johansson was born in 1894 in Jorpesgården in the village of Overbroad on the small, barren island of Kökar in the archipelago of Åland, a Swedish-speaking part of Finland. His father, Johan Eriksson, was a fisherman and his mother struggled on the lean, arable farm. When Erik was six…

  • The significant contributors to the history and development of Vietnam’s medicine sector

    Tran Nguyen Ngoc NhuHo Chi Minh City, Vietnam Physicians have long held a high position in Vietnamese society. Among many who have improved the health of their local communities, five physicians have notably contributed to science and medicine in Vietnam and beyond. Master Tue Tinh (1330 – ?) Master Tue Tinh’s real name was Nguyen…

  • John Caius, the polymath who described the sweating sickness

    Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Imagine being a physician in a rural community in England in the mid-sixteenth century, always concerned with the reappearance of the Black Death. Late one summer you are faced with a new strange illness. It begins with cold shivers, headaches, and severe diffuse pains leading to exhaustion, and within a…