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

  • Tobacco: Dr. Monardes’ miracle cure

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “[Tobacco] is an hearb of great affirmation for the excellent vertues that it hath.”1– Nicolás Monardes, MD (translated by John Frampton, 1577) “A custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs…”2– James I… Read more

  • The name of gratitude

    Giulio NicitaFlorence, Italy Florence was covered in a blanket of snow. Only three patients were sitting in Guido’s waiting room. Others had canceled because of the weather. A young pregnant woman waited with her husband and was soon ushered into the office. When the couple… Read more

  • Gioachino Rossini: Opera, cuisine, and gonorrhea

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Born in a family of musicians in Pesaro, Italy, Gioachino Rossini1 displayed inordinate talent from an early age, encouraged by his mother Anna, a notable singer, so that by the age of six, he was already playing the triangle in his… Read more

  • Love thy neighbour?: Peace-loving primates

    JMS PearceHull, England One of the greatest mysteries about human beings is the contrast between their intelligence, inventiveness, creativity and their extraordinary compulsion for self-destruction and violence. How can humans, blessed with compassion, charity and sympathy, combined with knowledge, self–awareness and understanding, so readily embrace… Read more

  • Röntgen’s birthplace

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom November 8th is World Radiology Day and celebrates the discovery of X-rays by Röntgen, who was a fifty-year-old relatively unknown physics professor at the University of Wurzburg in 1895 when he made his important discovery.   Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born… Read more

  • “A conspicuous place in the annals of murder”: The anatomy murders of Burke and Hare

    Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States In 1828 Scotland, two men committed a series of crimes that would earn them, as a contemporary newspaper described, “a conspicuous place in the annals of murder.”1 To both contemporaries and modern audiences, the gruesome story of Burke and Hare… Read more

  • Tales of the psychosomatic in the Lyrical Ballads

    Stewart JustmanMissoula, Montana, United States The year 1800 saw the publication of John Haygarth’s historic pamphlet Of the Imagination as a Cause and as a Cure of Disorders of the Body, an inquiry into what we now know as the nocebo and placebo effects. The… Read more

  • Aphorisms from Latham

    Peter Mere Latham, born in 1789, was appointed physician to the Middlesex Hospital at the age of 26 and elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians three years later. He joined St Bartholomew’s in 1827 and became physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria in 1837.… Read more

  • The Doctors’ Riot of 1788

    Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States In the wake of the American Revolution, slavery remained a key part of the United States’ economy. Even the northern states were not exempt; in the waning years of the eighteenth century, slaves made up nearly 20% of the population… Read more

  • The financial affairs of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    After more than 200 years, the music of the great genius Mozart has remained unsurpassed and the interest in various aspects of his life continues unabated. Most medical authorities now believe that he died from Henoch-Schönlein nephritis with severe edema, hypertension, and neurological complications in… Read more

  • Whale tales: Old and new

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Oh, are you from Wales? Do you know a fella named Jonah? He used to live in whales for a while.”– Groucho Marx The biblical story of the prophet Jonah and the whale is well known. Jonah does not want to accept… Read more

  • Wilfred Harris and periodic migrainous neuralgia

    JMS PearceHull, England The turn of the twentieth century marked an era when throughout Europe clinical neurology was evolving rapidly as an erudite specialist discipline based mainly on clinicopathological observations and correlations. Its English leaders were John Hughlings Jackson and David Ferrier followed by Henry… Read more