Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: blood flow

  • Running in my blood

    Niina Majaniemi Pirkanmaa, Finland   Picture from Marathon Photos.com. Source Some people are drawn to dancing, others to traveling or baking cakes. My passion is to torture myself by running for twenty-six miles, usually in very hot weather. Why? I could give you countless reasons. The thrill. The sense of achievement. Pushing boundaries. The blood…

  • Blood under the moon: the role of astrology in surgery

    Margareta-Erminia Cassani Michigan, United States   Zodiac Man, Homo Signorum, from Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons, c 1486, BL MS Egerton, 2572, f. 50v.  Luminarium:  Encyclopedia Project Imagine your doctor telling you that you need surgery. Then they follow that unsettling news with something, well, a little strange sounding. They tell you that the date…

  • Charles Darwin’s illness and the ‘wondrous water cure’

    John Hayman Melbourne, Australia   Fig. 1 Diagram of a douche, from John Smedley, Practical Hydropathy. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) suffered from a relapsing, incapacitating illness for most of his adult life with a bewildering array of symptoms.1 The first symptoms appeared when he was a medical student in Edinburgh (1825-1827), where he was unable to…

  • Character, genius, and a missing person in medicine

    Carrie BarronAustin, Texas, USA “He is the most un-talked about, unacknowledged, unknown and most important figure in the African American community…A genius.”1 In 1944, a surgeon with his trusted guide by his side performed the very first open-heart surgery on a fifteen-month-old, nine-pound girl. 1930, Nashville. A twenty-year old African-American man, honors student, and son…