Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Electrophysiology

  • Wilder Penfield

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Wilder Penfield, Stamp Wilder Penfield was not only a great surgeon and a great scientist, he was an even greater human being. -Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University   Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) (Fig. 1) was the most gifted pioneer of Canadian neurosurgery.…

  • Luigi Galvani: beginnings of electrophysiology

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, England   Fig 1. Lithograph: portrait of L. Galvani. From Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Physicist or physician? Scientist or healer? Artificially, these are divisions that have classified doctors through the ages. Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) (Fig 1.) showed that it was possible to be an amalgam of both.…

  • Pushing back into chaos

    Kyra McComas Salt Lake City, Utah, United States   The pathway of pain according to René Descartes: “Particles of heat” (A) close to the foot (B) contact the skin and pull threads (C) up the body, that “open the pores” (D, E) and allows “animal spirits to flow from a cavity (F) into the muscles,”…