Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Francis Galton

  • Book review: How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The human brain has long been a source of wonder and a fascinating subject for study. Philosophers, scientists, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and medical scholars have spent lifetimes studying the brain and how this remarkable organ works. In this book, neuroscientist and author Joseph Jebelli describes the evolutionary development of the…

  • Anne McLaren, transfusion, transplantation, and the nature of blood

    Matthew HolmesCambridge, UK Anne McLaren, Oxford-trained zoologist and first female Officer of the Royal Society, once claimed that “History may be circular, but the history of science is helical: it repeats itself, but each time at a deeper level.”1 To see the helical nature of the history of science in action, we need look no…

  • Eugenics: historic and contemporary

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Moral judgments, changing ethical criteria, and the broader concepts of good and evil are always controversial, and often dangerous. Prominent amongst such judgments are those relating to population control and the wider, ill-defined field of eugenics. Hidden, and often ignored or denied in these conversations, is the underlying…