Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Alzheimer

  • Tashima syndrome

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Let us now praise famous men.”— Ecclesiasticus 44:1 It has been a tradition in medicine to name a disease, a syndrome, a new treatment, or a surgical instrument after the person who describes it in the medical literature or invents it. Thus, we have Alzheimer’s disease, von Recklinghausen disease, Fanconi syndrome, Cornelia…

  • Medicine and cinema—A cultural symbiosis

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom For doctors and lovers of cinema, 1895 was an important year. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a fifty-year-old professor of physics, discovered X-rays in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany. On March 22 1895, the Lumiere brothers presented the first film on a screen to an audience of 200 in…

  • “Modern psychiatry begins with Kraepelin”

    JMS PearceHull, England “Modern psychiatry begins with Kraepelin”1 The pages of history seen through the retrospectroscope often provide dull facts rather than insights into the personalities and driving forces of its famous subjects. Such is the case of Emil Wilhelm Kraepelin (1856-1926) (Fig 1), a German psychiatrist, widely acknowledged as the founder and pioneer of…

  • Alzheimer and his disease

    JMS PearceHull, England “Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo (powerfully in deed, gently in manner).”— Franz Nissl’s description of Alzheimer (1916) Curiously, until the 1970s the high prevalence Alzheimer’s disease was not recognized as the most common cause of dementia.1 Most demented patients until then were labeled as having cerebral arteriosclerosis, or as sufferers from…

  • One chaplain’s journey: Teaching, hospice, and humanities

    Terry McIntyreForest Park, Illinois, United States Auburn University was an easy choice for a graduate student with two preschool youngsters. Teaching medieval literature was the draw. Later, a divorce necessitated working as a project manager in sub-contracting. When the Lutheran campus pastor in Ann Arbor wanted me on the property committee, I declined. Instead, I…