Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: 1499 Pieta

  • The toxin in the garden: The Wilms tumor miracle

    Prasad IyerSingapore The history of modern oncology almost always begins with a single name and clinical obsession: Sidney Farber and his war against “the white blood.” The 1947 aminopterin breakthrough at Boston Children’s Hospital is recounted with the reverence of a foundational story, the moment… Read more

  • Peter the Great and his reforms

    Peter the Great ruled Russia from 1682 to 1725 and is remembered for his reforms that modernized the Russian state. Born in 1672, he became tsar at a young age, though he initially ruled jointly with his half-brother Ivan V under the regency of his… Read more

  • Paul Janssen: Fentanyl innovator

    Alan Jay SchwartzPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Fentanyl is a remarkably potent opioid analgesic, but unfortunately is easily abused. It was invented by Paul Janssen (1926–2003) a Belgian entrepreneurial physician and founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica.1,2 Paul was the son of Constant Janssen (1895–1970), whose entrepreneurial mission… Read more

  • How reliving adolescence made me a better psychiatrist

    Marta AbrantesLisbon, Portugal My own adolescence still dwells within me, a submerged tide that mostly ripples calmly, but at other times unleashes heavy storms. I remember what I lived through, or swear “never again” with a lingering shame, yet I cannot deny the marks that… Read more

  • The Count of Monte Cristo: Medical

    Alexandre Dumas père was inspired to write The Count of Monte Cristo by the experiences of his father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a minor French nobleman and an enslaved Caribbean woman. Thomas-Alexandre was the first black general in the French army and accompanied Napoleon on… Read more

  • The walking stick as a social marker in society

    Mitchell BataviaNew York, New York, United States The walking stick, also referred to as a staff, crosier, shepherd’s crook, gadget cane, and cane, has fulfilled many roles over the centuries as a symbol for power,1-3 authority,2 weaponry,1,4 social status,1,4 faith,1,5 magic,1 smuggling,1 fashion,5 and physical support.6 Regardless of… Read more

  • Colonial psychiatry and the pathologizing of the African mind in Kenya

    Wanjiku DyerLos Angeles, California, United States In 1910, on the outskirts of Nairobi, the British colonial government converted a smallpox isolation center into what it called the Nairobi Lunatic Asylum.¹ By 1924, the facility had been renamed Mathari Mental Hospital. For the next four decades,… Read more

  • Segregated people, segregated blood

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Are they afraid they’ll all turn black?Is that why our blood they lack?”1—From a poem by high school student Geraldyne Ghess In 1941, US leaders suspected that the country would soon be in a war “against a German aggressor, obsessed with ethnic… Read more

  • Fanny Hesse: Mother of microbiology

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Her contribution to bacteriology makes her immortal.”1—Medical historians Arthur Hitchens and Morris Leikind “C’est un grand progrès!”2—Louis Pasteur Fanny Hesse (neé Angelina Fanny Eilshemius, 1850–1935) was born in New York City, the oldest of ten children in a family of Dutch origin.… Read more

  • The nursing school in the Warsaw Ghetto

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Despite extreme hardship and abject terror, the nursing school in the Warsaw Ghetto continued to provide the highest level of nursing education possible.”1 The Warsaw Jewish Nursing School was established in 1923 as part of the Czyste (“clean” in Polish) Jewish Hospital.… Read more

  • The great uncertainty

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece It was one of those episodes that often appear in works of fiction: the unusual circumstance, the odd coincidence, the thunderbolt out of a clear sky; an event that upsets the usual order of things, injects suspense, and drives the story according… Read more

  • Young Hitler’s blindness in World War I

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel During World War I, Corporal Adolf Hitler became blind during a gas attack in the trenches. He was examined by a young Jewish military physician, Karl Kroner, whose differential diagnosis was blindness due to mustard gas, malingering, shellshock, and/or “hysterical” blindness.… Read more