Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Fall 2020

  • Origin of yellow fever

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States The origin of yellow fever has been a controversial subject since the disease appeared in the New World. William C. Gorgas, who was responsible for the sanitation of Cuba and Panama, believed that yellow fever originated in Panama.1 Henry R. Carter, from the U.S. Marine Hospital Service and director…

  • John Hunter, Harvey Cushing, and acromegaly

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1. Charles Byrne, a giant, George Cranstoun, a dwarf, and three other normal sized men. Etching by J. Kay, 1794. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Introduction John Hunter and Harvey Cushing were two of the most preeminent surgeons of their eras. John Hunter is considered…

  • Cancer and eye diseases: two birds killed with one stone, anti-VEGF antibody

    Ashok Singh Chicago, IL, United States   Tissue Richly Endowed with Blood Vessels Loss of blood vessels after the same tissue was treated with Anti-VEGF antibody Various cells in the human body, such as lymphocytes, monocytes, and all tissue cells release small proteins that, unlike hormones, which act at distant sites, have powerful effects on…

  • Sympathectomy for hypertension

    Components of the sympathetic trunk. Redrawn from Wolf-Heidegger’s Atlas of Human Anatomy. From Anatomic Origin and Molecular Genetics in Neuroblastoma. CC BY 3.0. Sympathectomy for essential hypertension was introduced in the late 1920s at a time when no effective medical treatment was available. It consisted of resecting several sympathetic neurons that exit the spinal cord…

  • Gospel Argonaut

    Josephine Ensign Seattle, Washington, United States   Entrance to Wayside Mission Hospital housed on the steamboat IDAHO, Seattle, circa 1900. Photo: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections UW6573. Short of stature and tall of tales, Alexander de Soto was by some accounts a highly educated, skilled, compassionate physician and surgeon, and by other accounts a…

  • Book review: Architects of Structural Biology

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of Architects of Structural Biology by John Meurig Thomas. Modern twenty-first-century high-technology medicine, which we now take for granted, was only made possible by remarkable advances in the physical and biological sciences of the twentieth century. In Architects of Structural Biology, the contributions of four scientific giants…

  • The influence of the text De Arte Gymnastica on the resurgence of medical gymnastics in Renaissance Italy: Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606)

    Philippe Campillo Daniel Caballero Lille, France   Figure 1. Hieronymous Mercurialis (1530–1606). Line engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1528-1598. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) The physicians of ancient Greece were aware that muscular exercise was a source of health and strength, as well as achieving corporal beauty through a balanced relationship between different parts of…

  • Gulliver at Luggnagg — Learning about the immortal struldbrugs (abridged)

    Image from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. (Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver). Illustration by Stephen Baghot de la Bere, 1904. Originally published in 1726. Bridgeman Images. Public domain. The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people . . . they show themselves courteous to strangers. One day . .…

  • Indo-Europeans and medical terms

    William Jones by John Linnell (1792–1882) after the original of Joshua Reynolds. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Somewhere around 3,000 to 7,000 years ago there lived in the steppes of southern Ukraine, or perhaps in northern Anatolia, a group of people whom we now call Indo-European but about whom we know very little. They left…

  • William John Adie (1886–1935)

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. WJ Adie. Source William John Adie (Fig 1) deserves to be remembered as an unusually gifted, compassionate clinician and teacher, but he is best known for his account of the myotonic (Holmes-Adie) pupil. One of many talented Australians who enhanced British medicine, Adie was born in Geelong, west…