Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Emperor Maximillian

  • Guaiac and “the old Guaiacum test”

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States “The old Guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain.”— A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887 So declares Mr. Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel A Study in Scarlet, first published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887, and then as a book in July 1888 published by Ward,…

  • Vesalius: Spirit of excellence and inquiry

    JMS Pearce United Kingdom This brief sketch is offered to commemorate the 500th birthday of Andreas Vesalius and the beginnings of post-Renaissance anatomy. Few men are more deserving of lasting fame than Vesalius. The prime importance of his anatomy is irrefutable. The current decline in anatomy teaching has provoked trenchant criticism.1 But Vesalius was not the…