Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: 17th century

  • “Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing

    Katherine Harvey London, England, United Kingdom   A medieval miniature showing St Mark reading a book and holding spectacles to his eyes. From Jean Poyer, The Tilliot Hours (c. 1500), The British Library. On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half…

  • Book review: “All manner of ingenuity and industry”: a bio-bibliography of Dr. Thomas Willis 1621–1675

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of “All manner of ingenuity and industry” by Alastair Compston. Thomas Willis, born four hundred years ago, is still known by students of neuroanatomy today for the eponymous Circle of Willis. Yet most doctors do not know the story of Willis, the seventeenth-century British physician and his…

  • St. Audrey Etheldrida

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, UK   Medicine is full of strange tales, some with unforeseen ramifications. I recently discovered that the origins of the useful word “tawdry” surprisingly lay in a tumor of the throat—nature unspecified—of a seventh-century saint. St. Audrey, Etheldrida, or Æþelðryþ, born c. 636 AD, was an English princess generally referred to…

  • Justine Siegemund, opening doorways to midwifery

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States In the mid-1600s, midwife Justine Siegemund was a household name for mothers in Silesia, part of modern-day Poland. She served patients of every class in Legnica, in Berlin, and beyond, and published an obstetric manual which became one of the most popular midwifery books of its time. Details on her…

  • COVID-19 and 1665: Learning from Daniel Defoe

    Brian Birch Southampton, Hampshire, UK   London plague victims being buried in 1665, one of nine scenes from John Dunstall’s Plague broadsheet (1666). Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is an account of the 1665 Great Plague of London. Based on eyewitness experience, the undersigned initials “H. F.”…

  • Hemodialysis treatment for schizophrenia?

    Nicolas Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Jean-Baptiste Denys (1643–1704). Via Wikimedia Public Domain. “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did, and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.” Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus)  …

  • Giorgio Baglivi and The Practice of Physick

    James Marcum Waco, Texas, United States   Figure 1. Illustration of Giorgio Baglivi from The Practice of Physick by Giorgio Baglivi. Scan courtesy of James A. Marcum “To form a right Judgment of Diseases, is a very difficult Matter.” With this opening sentence, Giorgio Baglivi (Figure 1) began his 1696 treatise De Praxi Medica, which…

  • Book review: Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession by Gavin Francis. Gavin Francis is a Scottish doctor, author, and traveler who has worked in emergency medicine, family medicine, and as the resident doctor for the Antarctic survey, which resulted in a previous book. His wanderlust and way with words…

  • Pink and yellow

    Govind Krishnan Durham, North Carolina, United States   The Magpie by Claude Monet. 1868 – 1869. Musée d’Orsay. Via Wikimedia  I am wearing pink, I have a rosy glow My breaths are even, measured, slow The doctors come and go. Come and go. Come and go. But sometimes they mutter, their heads bowed low. And…

  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and smallpox

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. A painting of Mary Wortley Montagu by Jonathan Richardson the Younger. Via Wikimedia. There are few examples of people with no medical training who independently make significant advances in medical practice. One such person was the elegant, aristocratic Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)—daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, first Duke…