Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: articles

  • African American medical pioneers

    Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States   The road for African Americans in the medical professions has not been easy. Enslaved Africans received no education.1 During the first half of the nineteenth-century medical schools in the North would admit only a very small number of black students. Even after the Civil War, African Americans continued…

  • Avant garde research on a blood substitute at the Hektoen Institute of Medical Research

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Darien, Illinois, United States   From Left to Right: Gerald S Moss MD, Richard Brinkman MD, Lakshman Sehgal PhD, Robert Forest DVM. June 1975, photograph of the team with the first baboon resuscitated with stroma free hemoglobin after being bled down to a hemoglobin concentration of zero. Photo taken by the author. The…

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    DA VINCI AT 500 Published in December, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .   The year 2019 celebrates the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest painters and polymaths of all time. Born near Florence in 1452, he moved to Milan at…

  • Camus, Meursault, and the Biopsychosocial model

    Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York Since the development of medical literature studies in the 1970s, the field has grown and expanded in many fascinating ways.1 For example, courses in medical schools now encourage students to examine their own biases and emotional responses, and medical literature scholars emphasize the educational and clinical value of learning to…

  • Gordon Morgan Holmes MD., FRS.

    JMS Pearce Hull, England Figure 1: Gordon Holmes “Beneath the exterior of a martinet there was an Irish heart of gold” Wilder Penfield Gordon Holmes (1876-1965) was born in Castlebellingham, Ireland. He was named after his father, a landowner, descended from a Yorkshire family that had settled in King’s County (County Offaly) in the mid-seventeenth…

  • The illness of Tom Wedgwood: A tragic episode in a family saga

    John Hayman Melbourne, Australia Figure 1. Tom Wedgwood, from the frontispiece of Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer, by R.B. Litchfield (1903). The inscription reads: “From a chalk drawing belonging to Miss Wedgwood, of Leith Hill Place. Artist unknown.” Print in public domain. Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was born into the famous pottery dynasty as the third…

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    THE GLORY OF FRANCE Published in September 2019 H E K T O R A M A   .     ARCHITECTURE AND THE FRENCH HOSPITAL       Parisian hospitals, like those in many European capitals, are the results of years of accretion. Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest Parisian hospital, was founded by Saint Landry in…

  • Walt Whitman: a difficult patient

    Jack Coulehan Stony Brook, New York, United States   On June 15, 1888, the following notice appeared in  the New York Times under the headline AGED POET SUFFERS RELAPSE: “Prof. William Osler, of the University of Pennsylvania, was summoned by telegraph this afternoon to go to Walt Whitman’s bedside. The aged poet had a relapse,…

  • Sir Roderick Glossop: Wodehouse’s “eminent loony doctor”

    Paul Dakin North London, UK   Sir Roderick Glossop (right) and J Washburn Stoker appear in court following Jeeves’ intervention P.G. Wodehouse is one of the greatest comic authors of the twentieth century. He wrote nearly a hundred books containing a fascinating array of characters. Many inhabited the confined geography of 1920’s London and country…

  • Latin and medicine

    Noah DeLone Miami, Florida, United States   Photography by Celeste RC Language is the cornerstone of our ability to communicate as humans and underlies the prose of our medical discourse. The words we select can be indicative of our background, training, and intentions. It should come as no surprise that a robust knowledge of one’s…