Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Bloody Mary

  • The tomato in medicine and the Bloody Mary

    The tomato first grew on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in present-day Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, where it was neither cultivated nor eaten but perhaps used as a flavoring agent. It was transplanted in the early sixteenth century to southern Europe by the Spanish conquistadors of Hernán Cortés. In Italy, it was first…

  • The Queen’s quickening: The phantom pregnancies of Mary I

    Eve ElliotDublin, Ireland In November 1554, the people of England believed a miracle had taken place. Resplendent on her new throne, Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, proudly revealed that she was with child. She was thirty-seven (past the usual childbearing age in the Tudor era) and had only been married to her much…