Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Book review of “All manner of ingenuity and industry”: a bio-bibliography of Dr. Thomas Willis 1621-1675

  • The medical history of Ronald Reagan

    Ronald Reagan was the fortieth president of the United States and the fifth to be shot at by a would-be assassin. On March 30, 1981, a deranged young man, John Hinckley Jr., fired six bullets at him outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. One bullet… Read more

  • The “Republic of Letters” and Jacob Spon

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The European intellectual community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was interested in establishing a metaphysical “Republic of Letters” (Res Publica Litterarum or Res Publica Literaria).1-2 It was to be “a great and swirling progression of learning”3 such as that… Read more

  • Inscrutable malice: Ode to a virus

    Barry MeisenbergAnnapolis, Maryland, United States A mere 29 proteins, it punishes the world with an inscrutable malice.Be it another’s agent or a principal, a nefarious actor,it infects, inflames and thromboses according to its nature,Leaving a wake of death, disability, grief, and havoc. But no—not an… Read more

  • Hieronymus Gaubius

    Born in Germany near Heidelberg as the son of a cloth merchant, Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705–1780) was one of the many students of the renowned Herman Boerhaave. He became his immediate successor and like him had studied medicine in the Netherlands at the University of… Read more

  • The smell of dystopia: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It’s a sad commentary on our age that we find Dystopias a lot easier to believe in than Utopias: Utopias we can only imagine, Dystopias we’ve already had.”—Margaret Atwood Brave New World1 is a science fiction novel about a high-tech, controlling dystopia.… Read more

  • My second birthday—or date to die?

    Laura ClaridgeSaugerties, New York, United States I was relieved when the date arrived, and my husband, Dennis, moved me into my next month’s home on the eighth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering, where we both marveled at the difference between this unit and neuro-oncology, one… Read more

  • John Ruhräh, poliomyelitis pioneer and medical historian

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “The best sailors are those who have studied the charts and records of those who have sailed before.” – John Ruhräh John Ruhräh was a pediatrician and medical historian born to German parents in Chillicothe, Ohio, on September 26, 1872. After… Read more

  • Samuel Auguste Andre David Tissot (1728–1797)

    JMS PearceHull, England The Swiss physician Samuel Auguste Andre David Tissot (1728–1797)*1,2 (Fig 1) spent his professional life in Lausanne, despite tempting offers made by the royalties of Poland and England. He developed into one of the most influential physicians of the Age of Enlightenment:… Read more

  • The problem with drinking (water) on airplanes

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink.”– The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) In the year 2020, 4.5 billion people flew on commercial aircraft. The previous year saw US airlines carry over 900 million passengers, and only 13%… Read more

  • John Morgan, founder of public medical education in America

    John Morgan was born in 1735, grandson of David Morgan, a Quaker who emigrated to America from Wales around the year 1700. His father was Evan Morgan, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who lived at the corner of Market and Second Streets and was a friend… Read more

  • ReJoycing in words and medicine

    Fergus ShanahanCork, IrelandEamonn QuigleyHouston, Texas, United States Making mejical history all over the show!-James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (FW) 514.2-31 James Joyce (1882–1941) is celebrated for his portrayal of the lives of ordinary people in his native city. Like many of the great writers, he had… Read more

  • Important figures in the history of neuropsychiatry

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The life of William Alwyn Lishman (1931–2021) was dedicated to neuropsychiatry.1-2 His classic textbook, Organic Psychiatry (1978), is a foundational book for neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physiatrists. Lishman was the first UK professor of neuropsychiatry whose “abiding message was that neuropsychiatry… Read more