Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Biology

  • Chemical origins of terrestrial biology

    David GreenChicago, Illinois, United States As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s, I attended a lecture by Harold C. Urey, a Nobel laureate. The subject of his lecture was the origin of life, and he described an experiment that he and his graduate student, Stanley Miller, had performed at the University…

  • When Darwin was wrong

    John HaymanVictoria, Australia Charles Darwin (1809-1802) is rightly famous, not for the discovery of evolution but for revealing the mechanism by which it may occur, natural selection. He not only formulated this idea, but he also presented evidence to support it and put it forward in a readily understood manner that could be comprehended by…

  • A note on medical metaphors

    JMS PearceHull, England When Winston Churchill memorably referred to his bouts of depression as “black dog,” in two words he painted a picture that embraced feelings, which otherwise would have taken hundreds of words to describe. I have to confess a liking for certain medical metaphors. Though they can be overused in medical and biological…

  • Too many doctors: The death of Friedrich III

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Un médico cura; dos, dudan; tres, muerte segura. One doctor, health; two, doubt; three, certain death. —Spanish saying Friedrich III of Hohenzollern was the second Kaiser of Germany and eighth King of Prussia. After completing his studies, which combined military training and liberal arts, he married Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen…

  • The Doctors Cori, carbohydrate metabolism, and the Nobel prize

    Energy in animals and humans is stored in the body in the form of glycogen. Starch, a similar molecule but less branched, serves the same function in plants. Glycogen, discovered by Claude Bernard in 1856, is stored primarily in the liver (about 120 grams) and in muscle (about 400 grams), and to a lesser amount…

  • Thomas Henry Huxley

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England “In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration . . . In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”– TH Huxley Above a butcher’s shop in Ealing in…

  • Emily, Usher, and American Gothic perspectives on mortality

    Olga ReykhartLiam ButchartStony Brook, New York, United States In an editorial for Medical Humanities, Gillie Bolton notes that death is a common theme in literature and also in medicine. She writes, “Death, dying, and bereavement are dark threads running through all literature. Not only are they life’s sole certainties, along with birth; they are also…

  • Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain

    Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…

  • A wider science

    Ahmad ShakeriHowsikan KugathasanToronto, Ontario, Canada Working at a Toronto harm reduction clinic helped reconcile my different points of view on drug addiction. In the classroom, I was a progressive-minded graduate student willing to apply research to improve health outcomes for people who use drugs. But on the street and the subway, my personal policy was…

  • Blood and pernicious anemia

    Omar AlzarkaliBatavia, New York, United States Blood is powerful. The mere sight of it can cause an adult to fall to the ground; as a medical student, I have seen it happen. Faces go pale and legs can no longer carry their weight as they succumb to this primitive reflex. Perhaps this vasovagal response happens…