Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Charles Darwin

  • The other Charles Darwin (1758–1778)

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom “’Precursoritis’ is the bane of historiography.”—Stephen Jay Gould One of the best-known and important discoveries in the practice of medicine was the introduction of digitalis by William Withering (Fig 1). It was the subject of controversy that involved the Darwin family. For almost two hundred years digitalis was the mainstay…

  • The X Club

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Charles Babbage, who conceived the first automatic digital computer, published in 1830 Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. This stimulated the formation of several new groups that aimed to further scientific progress and exchange of ideas. These were distinct from Britain’s nineteenth century gentlemen’s social clubs and were…

  • Eugenics: Historic and contemporary

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Moral judgments, changing ethical criteria, and the broader concepts of good and evil are always controversial, and often dangerous. Prominent amongst such judgments are those relating to population control and the wider, ill-defined field of eugenics. Hidden, and often ignored or denied in these conversations, is the underlying conflict between…

  • The illness of Tom Wedgwood: A tragic episode in a family saga

    John Hayman Melbourne, Australia Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was born into the famous pottery dynasty as the third surviving son of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and his wife Sarah (1734-1815). Sarah was also a Wedgwood, a distant cousin of her husband.1 Tom was ill for all of his short life, a life recorded by his biographer, Richard…

  • Charles Darwin’s illnesses

    There is a prevalent consensus that most of Charles Darwin’s lifelong symptoms are not attributable to organic disease.1-5 It would seem unlikely that he contracted chronic Chagas disease in South America, because his symptoms began before he ever set foot on the HMS Beagle.2 His various complaints were intermittent, many improved with age, and he…

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    JMS PearceHull, United Kingdom Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) conceived the original idea of evolution by natural selection entirely independently of Charles Darwin.1 In the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey, next to Charles Darwin’s memorial, is a white marble roundel with a profile relief bust to the memory of Alfred Russel Wallace, erected in 1915.…

  • Why did Darwin drop out of medical school?

    Richard Brown and Thalia Garvock-de MontbrunHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Erasmus Alvey (Ras) Darwin, the elder brother of Charles Darwin, completed six months of hospital training in Edinburgh in 1825–1826 and then went to London to study at the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy.1,7 Charles Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1825–1827 and then…

  • Charles Harrison Blackley: the man who put the hay in hay fever

    Julian CraneWellington, New Zealand Since the 1950s, and especially since the 1980s, there has been a worldwide increase in the prevalence of allergic diseases, asthma, hay fever, and eczema. In the last twenty years the most notable manifestation of this trend has been the rapid rise in food allergy in children.1 Thirty years ago food…

  • Darwin at the Chinese opera

    Sam ShusterWoodbridge, Suffolk I am grateful to Milky Man Shan Cheung, Administrative Coordinator at the Chinese Opera Information Centre, and Phil Olsen of Beard Team USA for their help in acquiring research materials and images for this paper. I would also like to thank the National Library of China for the use of its images…

  • The anatomy of beauty in nineteenth-century England

    Alan W. BatesLondon, United Kingdom Few characteristics seem more subjective and less amenable to scientific study than beauty. As the philosopher David Hume wrote in 1741, “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” How then did some nineteenth-century European anatomists come to see human beauty as a branch of science for which…