Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Francis Bacon

  • Plato’s and Bacon’s views on the role of medical care for chronic diseases

    (Abstracted from the essay on Francis Bacon by Lord Macaulay) “To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very disputable advantages. He did not indeed object to quick cures for acute disorders, or for injuries produced by accidents. But the art which resists the slow sap of a chronic disease had no share…

  • Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy and medicine

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Novum Organum Scientiarum, 2nd edition, 1645. EC.B1328.620ib, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced. – Alexander Pope, 1741   The early seventeenth century was a time when natural philosophy, the precursor of modern…

  • Art and alcohol

    Giovanni CeccarelliRoma, Italy In the late 1940s Elaine de Kooning, wife of one of the most eminent exponents of American abstract expressionism (Willem de Kooning), commented that the whole art world of her time had become alcoholic. Yet even earlier, perhaps always, drinking and drunkenness had attracted the interest of many artists. In a drinking…

  • Pursuing “conclusions infinite”: The divine inspiration of Georg Cantor

    Sylvia Karasu New York, New York, United States Georg Cantor, German mathematician, 1845–1918. Cantor as an older man, date unknown. Cantor was not quite age 73 when he died of heart failure. Photo Credit: Colport/Alamy Stock Photo. Used with permission. There is a “fine line between brilliance and madness”: the distinction, for example, between a…

  • Plain Words, or pandemic medical gobbledygook

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1: Comic featuring Plain Words The great essayist and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) once said: “Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past.” I suggest that the problems posed by writers who fail to convey meaning are not new.1,2 As long ago as…

  • Canadian contributions to the study of pathology

    Guillermo QuinonezLaurette GeldenhuysNova Scotia, Canada Canadian and American medicine in general, and pathology in particular, have developed in parallel and in synchrony since the nineteenth century. Despite Canada’s limited population, scientific cultural similarities and geographical conditions would explain such development. Canadians, some of whom practiced both in the U.S. and Canada, have made important contributions…

  • The past and future of blood banking

    Eva Kitri Mutch StoddartSaigon, Vietnam Blood oozes allure. The elixir of life, viscous and dramatic scarlet, courses through the veins of every living human. Blood has been viewed as sacred for centuries. Aristocrats used to sip at it to stoke their youth and vitality. Bram Stoker’s quintessential vampire novel, the revered Dracula, was published in…

  • The basilisk—a cause of sudden death

    Anna Lantz Einar Perman Stockholm, Sweden   Mythical creatures have been described and feared since ancient times. The group is large. It includes dragons, sirens, basilisks, centaurs, phoenixes, sea monsters, and several more. These mythical creatures may have been invented to provide explanations for events for which there were no natural explanations, such as when…

  • William Harvey

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States The impression that William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the closed circulation of the blood is not entirely accurate, although after Harvey there was never any doubt about it. Regardless of what credit you ascribe to him, it is clear that his research benefited from more than two thousand years of…