Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Galen

  • Early observations of the pulse

    JMS PearceHull, England Over the centuries, various devices bearing names now unfamiliar (Clepsydra, water clock, pulsilogium, Sphygmologia, Pulse Watch) were used to measure the pulse.The examination of the pulse to assist in diagnosis and prognosis dates back to ancient Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese physicians. Because they had little understanding of cardiovascular physiology, we might wonder…

  • Medical teaching from ancient civilizations to the nineteenth century

    Patrick FiddesAustralia The perception that medicine’s contemporary teaching practices were introduced by innovative Modern Era1 physicians does not recognize the original contributions of ancient forefathers. Medicine’s earliest teaching records exist in ancient Sanskrit. They provide “detailed information concerning the training of doctors”2 in Akkadian where “the master’s interpretation of texts were preserved as [an] oral…

  • The pineal: seat of the soul

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom The pineal for millennia had been a structure of mystery. In Ancient Egyptian culture, The Eye of Horus was a sign of prosperity and protection, often referred to as the third eye. In Ayurvedic physiology it corresponds to the sixth chakra—Ajna, located in the middle of the forehead, representing intelligence,…

  • The appendicitis conundrum

    Jayant RadhakrishnanNathaniel KooDarien, Illinois, United States Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in the world. One would expect consensus regarding its management, but that has not been the case from the time the appendix was first identified. Galen (129–216 CE) was not permitted to dissect human bodies, so he dissected monkeys. Since…

  • Book review: Greco-Roman Medicine and What it Can Teach Us Today

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The Republic of Rome was founded in the sixth century BC. In the third century BC, the western Roman Empire began to spread outside the borders of Italy. Roman rule came to Britain in AD 43 with the invasion by Claudius and ended in AD 476. The eastern Roman Empire,…

  • Book review: Medicine in the Middle Ages

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom In the history of Western Europe, the Middle Ages refers to the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century through the beginning of the Renaissance in the 1500s. These thousand years were characterized by unstable nation-states led by kings and nobility. Tribalism was rife, and…

  • The striking social tableaux vivants of Lejaren à Hiller (1920s to 1940s)

    J.T.H. ConnorSt. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada In 1927 the Davis & Geck (DG) company commissioned artist Lejaren à Hiller to promote its surgical sutures. Hiller’s subsequent advertising campaign of modern art photographs was distributed to doctors across the United States and Canada during the 1920s to 1940s in simulated leather portfolios titled Sutures in Ancient Surgery…

  • Gouty quotes

    JMS Pearce Hull, England The recent reproduction of G. Cruikshank’s A self-indulgent man afflicted with gout by a demon burning his foot reminded me of many memorable remarks made by sages of various disciplines (several themselves victims of gout) on the subject. That the excruciating pain of gout (Figs 1 and 2) provokes mirth and ribald…

  • Giovanni Boccaccio on pandemics past and present

    Constance MarkeyChicago, IL Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is universally celebrated for his masterpiece The Decameron, an appealing assemblage of one hundred loosely connected novellas, all designed, in part, to distract the fourteenth-century Italian audience from the Black Death plaguing the country. Some of the tales are slapstick misadventures to make the reader laugh, others are more…

  • Wet nursing: A historical perspective

    Mariella ScerriMellieha, Malta Wet nursing, a form of breastfeeding provided by someone other than an infant’s biological mother,1 has a long and sometimes controversial history. Death in childbirth, a mother’s illness, as well as cultural habits and circumstance have all been reasons across civilizations to employ a surrogate to feed a newborn.2 In elite households, “nurses…