Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Dead Sea: health claims and tourist delights

  • Thomas Hume’s recollections of the public execution of William Burke

    Daniel PatroneOneonta, New York, United States In the early nineteenth century, the rapid advancement of anatomical science created a surging demand for human cadavers. Given the woefully inadequate legal supply of cadavers, this demand fueled the rise of a lucrative but illicit industry of graverobbers… Read more

  • Dr. Michael Perl: Uncle Mouse’s war and other stories

    Michael AbramsonMelbourne, Australia Michael Mathias Perl was born in Melbourne, Australia on 22 May 1903, the first child of Jacob and Elizabeth Perl. He was named after his grandfather who had been born in Chodziessen, Prussia, and arrived in Port Phillip aboard the Arabian in… Read more

  • Lord Melbourne (1779–1848): Mentor of Queen Victoria

    Lord William Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s well-known prime minister, descended from the great landed aristocracy that had ruled Great Britain for most of the eighteenth century. Some of their members had sat in Parliament for many years, including one who never opened his mouth during his… Read more

  • The deaths of the Romantic poets

    The deaths of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, all occurring within five years of each other, form a tragic trilogy in the history of English Romantic poetry. Each died young, and their ends reflect the turbulence, idealism, and fragility that marked their… Read more

  • József Antall: Hungarian medical historian and political leader

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England In the Taban region of Budapest, at the foot of the castle district of the city outside the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History, stands a statue of József Antall, a famous medical historian who became the first democratically elected Prime Minister… Read more

  • What the elders fed us

    Caleb WamangaKakamega, Kenya Before the rain starts, the vine creeps across the yard. Mboga ya kienyeji (traditional vegetable), the green leaf that rounded off a meal, was what we called them. It is a gift that is never announced, never wrapped, but always there when… Read more

  • The medical interests of Sir Walter Raleigh

    Christopher DuffinLondon, England Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618; Fig. 1) was a prominent character in Elizabethan England. A one-time favorite of the Queen, he led a rich and varied life as an adventurer and explorer, statesman, soldier, and author. Less well-known is his interest in alchemy… Read more

  • The “Blue Death:” Cholera’s reign of terror

    Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia Cholera—the “Blue Death” and, in the words of one witness, “one of the most ghastly experiences a disease could inflict on a human being”1—emerged in the early 1800s from the Ganges delta, traveling along the routes of global trade2 and religious… Read more

  • Gustav Klimt (1862–1918): Medical aspects

    The renowned Austrian painter Gustav Klimt lived and worked in Vienna during a period of unprecedented medical advances. The capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had become a world center for innovation in clinical medicine, therapeutics, and surgery. It had also become the site of a… Read more

  • V.V. Veresaev, another forgotten physician-author

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Dr. Veresaev was born in Tula as Vikenty Vikentyevich Smidowitz in 1867, son of a famous Polish-Catholic physician father and a Russian mother. Raised and educated in Russia, his father established a free-of-charge hospital in Tula. First to introduce sanitary and… Read more

  • The very prejudiced H.L. Mencken and his medical views

    A century has gone by since Henry Louis Mencken wrote his diatribes, some of which he actually called Prejudices, now highly distasteful and taboo. He himself was born in Baltimore in 1880, spoke only German as a child, and during both wars thought the Germans… Read more

  • Dr. George Finlayson and his mighty little squirrel

    Stephen MartinThailand Part of running a museum in tropical Thailand is caring for distressed animals on the grounds. We have no choice, because the nearest wildlife rehabbers are in California. Sunshine drives life, so Thailand has a gloriously rich natural history. The museum’s animal patients… Read more