Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Science

  • How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny

    JMS PearceHull, England In March 1933 while visiting Vienna, William Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics, learned that Hitler had just decreed it illegal for “non-Aryan,” mostly Jewish people to hold posts in the Civil Service. Many lawyers, doctors, and academics were deemed “undesirable” and dismissed instantly. Nazi concentration camps, mass desecration, medical…

  • Omentum: Much more than “policeman of the abdomen”

    Ashok SinghChicago, Illinois, United States The omentum is a curtain-like tissue that hangs from the bottom edge of the stomach and covers the abdominal organs below. It is a lattice of adipose (fat) cells peppered with islands of compact tissue known as milky spots, which are clusters of macrophages, lymphocytes, and hematopoietic cells. The omentum…

  • Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852)

    JMS Pearce Hull, England It is undeniable that computer science and technology play an important part in medical investigation and research, and universally in the transmission of information. Everyone remembers Charles Babbage, (1791-1871) (Fig 1) inventor of the computer and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, but an almost equally important figure has been largely overlooked.…

  • Doubled edged shield

    Adil Menon Cleveland, Ohio, United States Working my way through a biography of pioneering vaccine developer Maurice Hilleman titled Vaccinated, I was struck by how often the researchers of his era, such as Jonas Salk, tested their vaccines both on their own children as well as on children with cognitive challenges. If indeed the latter were…

  • Cancer and eye diseases: two birds killed with one stone, anti-VEGF antibody

    Ashok SinghChicago, IL, United States Various cells in the human body, such as lymphocytes, monocytes, and all tissue cells release small proteins that, unlike hormones, which act at distant sites, have powerful effects on only neighboring cells. These proteins go under a variety of names such as paracrine factors, growth factors, or, more generally, cytokines…

  • Absinthe: The green fairy

    Nicolás Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”—Oscar Wilde Absinthe is a spirit with very high alcohol…

  • Kathleen (Yardley) Lonsdale DSc., FR

    JMS PearceHull, England Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) (Fig 1) like her contemporary Dorothy Hodgkin was one of the women pioneers in a man’s world of professional scientists.1 She developed original techniques in X-ray diffraction of crystals to determine the structure of a molecule. This led to studies of the benzene ring, structure of drugs, and investigations…

  • Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM, FRS (1910-1994)

    JMS PearceHull, England Dorothy Hodgkin (Fig 1), though not by religion, had close Quaker affinities through her marriage and through her spirited pacifism. She possessed a unique mixture of scientific skills that allowed her to extend the use of X-rays to reveal the structures of compounds, a technical venture far more complex than anything attempted…

  • John Dalton

    JMS PearceHull, England John Dalton (1766–1844) (Fig 1) is one of the most revered scientists of the last 250 years. His origins were humble. He was the son of Deborah and Joseph Dalton, a weaver, both members of the Society of Friends. He was born in a thatched cottage in Eaglesfield near Cockermouth in the…

  • Terminal digit preference

    Marshall Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States Numbers that end in zero motivate and energize people. Recall Y2K, when the world celebrated on January 1, 2000. The irresistibility of zeros resulted in everyone celebrating on the wrong date: the new millennium started on January 1, 2001, not 2000. The first year of the Julian calendar in…