Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: 19th century

  • JLW Thudichum: neglected “Father of neurochemistry”

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum. Photo. National Library of Medicine. Public domain. Knowledge of diseases of the nervous system reflects an understanding of the basic sciences of neural mechanisms and organization. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Nobel prizewinners Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón…

  • Silas Weir Mitchell and causalgia

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Silas Weir Mitchell. Photo by Frederick Gutekunst, 1881. National Library of Medicine. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829 – 1914) (Fig 1) was born in Philadelphia, the seventh physician in three generations. Webb Haymaker gives an early clue to his unconventional personality when he…

  • Robert Bentley Todd

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Todd prize for Clinical Medicine (left). Medal by Joseph Shepherd Wyon, 1861. Science Museum, London, United Kingdom. Via Google Arts & Culture.  Robert Bentley Todd (right). Mezzotint by G. Zobel, 1860, after D. Y. Blakiston. Wellcome Collection. Public domain.  Students of King’s College Hospital London are…

  • Guaiac and “the old Guaiacum test”

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Guaiacum officinale. Photo by Forest and Kim Starr. July 27, 2007. Via Wikimedia. CC BY 3.0. “The old Guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain.” — A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887   So declares Mr. Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel A Study…

  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Statue of Copernicus, Warsaw, Poland. Photo by Arpan K. Banerjee. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 Feb 1473 in the Prussian town of Torun, now part of Poland. He studied at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, and although his main subjects were mathematics and astronomy, he…

  • Book review: John Hughlings Jackson: Clinical Neurology, Evolution and Victorian Brain Science

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom John Hughlings Jackson is often considered to be the father of clinical neurology, although his contemporary in France, Jean-Martin Charcot, could also justifiably lay claim to that title. Both men made gigantic contributions in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a golden age of clinical neurology in which many…

  • The Grand Army and horsemeat

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Horse sirloin (contre-filet), in France. Photo by Jiel Beaumadier, October 9, 2010. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. “An army travels on its stomach.” — Attributed to Napoleon   Out of all of the innovations of Dominique Jean Larrey (1766-1842), one has yet to be properly appreciated. In his own words,…

  • Wilhelm Baum (1799–1883)

    Wilhelm Baum. Photograph of painting by Wilhelm Title. Uploaded by Mehlauge. Via Wikimedia. Postgraduate medical education in the nineteenth century required personal contact with the masters of the profession – working and rounding with them, or at least listening to their lectures. Thus the German surgeon Wilhelm Baum spent one year after obtaining his doctorate…

  • Musical evenings on HMS Bounty

    Stewart Justman Missoula, Montana, United States   The mutineers turning Bligh and his crew from the Bounty, 29th April 1789. Illustration by Robert Dodd. 1790. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Dispatched to Tahiti in 1787 to gather breadfruit trees to be transplanted to the West Indies, HMS Bounty was a small ship with every possible…

  • The illness of King George III

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Farmer George & his wife. Published by William Holland. 1786. © The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The Hanoverian King George III (1738–1820) was a diligent man of wit and intelligence, a man who enhanced the reputation of the British monarchy until he…