Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: galvanism

  • Roget and his Thesaurus

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, UK There was much more to Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869)(Fig 1) than his indispensable Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Fig 2).1 But little is remembered of his illustrious career in medicine and scientific discovery, which is surprising since in these endeavors he was highly regarded in his time.2 This may stem…

  • “Moonlight” and silence

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States At seventeen, I knew little about the limitations or losses that might cause a person to second-guess a vocation, deeply held belief, or identity. Perhaps those questions about the unknowable future inhabit the soul of a teenager under the guise of general angst and anxiety, or alternatively are tamped…

  • Charles Darwin’s illness and the ‘wondrous water cure’

    John HaymanMelbourne, Australia Charles Darwin (1809-1882) suffered from a relapsing, incapacitating illness for most of his adult life with a bewildering array of symptoms.1 The first symptoms appeared when he was a medical student in Edinburgh (1825-1827), where he was unable to witness surgical procedures and was noted to have a “weak stomach.”2 Later, when…

  • Luigi Galvani: beginnings of electrophysiology

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Physicist or physician? Scientist or healer? Artificially, these are divisions that have classified doctors through the ages. Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) (Fig 1.) showed that it was possible to be an amalgam of both. The word “galvanize” derives not from physics but from Galvani, a medical doctor who studied electricity in animal…