Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: blood vessels

  • Christopher Wren’s contributions to medicine

    JMS PearceHull, England An extraordinary natural philosopher and Renaissance man, Christopher Wren (1632–1723) (Fig 1) was primarily an astronomer and architect.1 He is remembered mostly for his work after the Great Fire of London of 1666 as designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral, originally erected in AD 604. Wren laid the first stone at on Ludgate…

  • Humans with tails

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of acorkscrew with a small tuft of hair on the tip.”— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude1 The chance of a child being born with a tail-like lumbosacral appendage is small. About sixty cases have…

  • Alexis Carrel: The sunshine and the shadow

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs, and later developed techniques that were predecessors…

  • Omentum: Much more than “policeman of the abdomen”

    Ashok SinghChicago, Illinois, United States The omentum is a curtain-like tissue that hangs from the bottom edge of the stomach and covers the abdominal organs below. It is a lattice of adipose (fat) cells peppered with islands of compact tissue known as milky spots, which are clusters of macrophages, lymphocytes, and hematopoietic cells. The omentum…

  • Cancer and eye diseases: two birds killed with one stone, anti-VEGF antibody

    Ashok SinghChicago, IL, United States Various cells in the human body, such as lymphocytes, monocytes, and all tissue cells release small proteins that, unlike hormones, which act at distant sites, have powerful effects on only neighboring cells. These proteins go under a variety of names such as paracrine factors, growth factors, or, more generally, cytokines…

  • The power of sound

    Robert SiegelLos Angeles, California, United States Waking from a deep sleep or a dream can trigger a memory with an ethereal quality. This is especially true when the memory is more than 50 years old. I grew up in a home where nocturnal parties were frequent. These gatherings were attended by actors and artists, and…