Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Arpan Banerjee

  • Book review: Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK I do not use superlatives lightly, but this is an extraordinary book. It is ambitious in scope and seeks to describe the progress of humanity from earliest times with an emphasis on the role of infectious diseases in our cultural, economic, political, and scientific development. Drawing from disciplines as diverse as…

  • Book review: Pandemic Obsession: How They Feature in our Popular Culture

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Following the worldwide COVID pandemic, there has been a plethora of books published on the theme of epidemics and pandemics. Readers may be forgiven if they feel they are now suffering from literary pandemic fatigue. However, this interesting new book sets out to describe how pandemics have influenced literary writing throughout…

  • Book review: A History of Insanity and the Asylum

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Mental health topics have long been a source of fascination. In this new book, author Juliana Cummings explores the history of insanity and asylums from the Middle Ages to the modern era, revealing the sometimes-shocking treatment of people with mental illness over the centuries. Although the book is written from a…

  • Book review: My Years with the British Red Cross

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The Red Cross is known worldwide as a great humanitarian achievement. The charity was founded by Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, who was moved by the lack of care available to people who had been wounded in the Battle of Solferino, Italy, in 1859. His idea was to produce national societies…

  • Book review: A History of Women in Medicine and Medical Research

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Research and writing on women’s contributions to science and medicine are needed and welcome. Books about science and medical advances have often concentrated primarily on men’s achievements and have a distinctly Western bias. This new book on the history of women in medicine and medical research is a superb addition to…

  • The Royal Society of Medicine of London: A brief history

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The origins of the Royal Society of Medicine in London can be traced back to 1805. It was in that year that a breakaway group of learned physicians and surgeons formed a new medical society, the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. They met first in Gray’s Inn, the legal area…

  • Book review: The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Classical antiquity has long been a subject of human fascination. The time period covered in this book ranges from around 1000 BCE to 650 CE. The editors have produced an encyclopedic volume of essays from scholars worldwide, resulting in a comprehensive source of information about the history of science and medicine…

  • Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield: Inventor of the CT scanner

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The name Godfrey Hounsfield is not familiar to most healthcare professionals, yet his invention of the CT (Computerized Tomography) scanner is one of the greatest radiological advances since Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895. Nearly all modern hospitals have a CT scanner, which enables doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis, especially…

  • Book review: Am I Normal?

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England “Am I normal?” is a question that many of us ask at some point in our lives. The existential angst of the twentieth century has resulted in a desire to fit in to society and gain acceptability from peers. The term “normal” was first used in the field of mathematics, but…

  • India’s oldest medical schools

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom 15 August 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of Indian independence from British rule. Since independence, the Indian medical diaspora has successfully settled in countries around the world and contributed greatly to their health care systems. Outside India, few are familiar with the history of modern Indian medicine. India was long…