Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Addison’s disease

  • The illness and death of Jane Austen

    The final years of Jane Austen were overshadowed by a mysterious illness that has long since been a subject of speculation and debate. Her health began to decline in early 1816, when she was around forty years old. Her letters from that period make occasional references to fatigue and bouts of illness, but she tended…

  • Nazi doctors and medical eponyms

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The tradition in medicine has been to name a pathological condition after the person who first described it in the medical literature. Thus we have Addison’s disease, Down’s syndrome, and several hundred others. The tendency now is to eliminate the possessive,1 giving Addison disease and Down syndrome. Presently, “new” diseases are named…