Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: cerebrospinal fluid

  • Lumbar puncture

    JMS PearceHull, England Access to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in life as an aid to diagnosis proved impossible until lumbar puncture. Galen of Pergamon (AD 130–200) failed to recognize CSF; he described a vaporous, not aqueous, humor that he called περιττώματα (residues) in the cerebral ventricles. Cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles was probably first shown by…

  • Lina Shtern and the blood brain barrier

    Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada Future generations will remember our age for unbelievable electronic progress, but also for the bloody conflicts of World War II, characterized by dictatorial figures that darkened the lives of so many productive, innocent people. Among these was Dr. Lina Shtern, whose pioneer work permitted her to envision and name the blood-brain…

  • Theodor Kocher (1841–1917)

    Theodor Kocher was the first surgeon to ever receive the Nobel Prize. He was born in 1841 in Bern, Switzerland, went to school there, and was first in his class. He studied medicine in Bern and graduated summa cum laude, then went on to further his education in Zürich, Berlin, London, and Paris. At the…

  • Theo’s marvelous medicine

    Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, USA On a cool December day in 1960, a nanny was pushing an infant in a stroller down 85th Street in New York City. Stepping into the road, the nanny saw a taxi whip around the corner and before she could react, the stroller was struck by the taxi and knocked into…

  • A fatal and mysterious illness

    Michael D. ShulmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In late 1972, a flurry of letters began to appear in the British medical journal The Lancet which captured the alarm, the bafflement, and the intense professional curiosity aroused by a mysterious new illness. The illness was unique to patients receiving hemodialysis, typically those who had been on dialysis…