Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Goran Wettrell

  • Sir William Osler and Oxford

    Göran Wettrell Lund, Sweden   Figure 1. William Osler in the library of 13 Norham Gardens, his Oxford home, standing with a triptych of portraits of Thomas Linacre, William Harvey, and Thomas Sydenham with the motto “Literae, Scientia, Praxis.” Courtesy of Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University. William Osler was one of…

  • Two giants in thoracic surgery: Clarence Crafoord and Åke Senning

    Göran Wettrell Lund University, Sweden Figure 1. Senning (left), Elmquist, and Crafoord (right) with an external pacemaker, Stockholm, Sweden. Photo courtesy of Marko Turina on Wikimedia (“Senning, Elmqvist & Crafoord 1954”). CC BY 3.0. Clarence Crafoord Clarence Crafoord (1899–1984) was one of the most outstanding surgeons in Sweden during the twentieth century (Figure 1). He…

  • Jean-Baptiste de Sénac and his early textbook on cardiology

    Göran WettrellLund, Sweden William Harvey was an important figure in the early days of cardiovascular physiology. Based on meticulous observations, he published De Motu Cordis and Sanguinus in 1628 and has been proposed as the founder of physiology and cardiology.1 During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, physicians such as Raymond Vieussens (1641-1715), Giovanni-Maria…

  • Early clinical and molecular discoveries in Long QT Syndrome

    Göran Wettrell Sweden   Fig. 1 Anton Jervell, Norwegian physician, hospital manager and later professor at the University of Oslo with research on heart diseases. Source Sudden and unexpected death in people who are less than thirty-five years of age is associated with negative autopsy results in forty percent of cases.1 Long QT Syndrome (LQTS)…

  • “The Sick Child” in Scandinavian art

    Göran Wettrell Sweden   Figure 1. The Sick Child, Gabriel Metsu, 1660-65, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Within Western figurative pictorial art there has long been an interest in showing sick children, their psychological attitudes, the effects on the family, and indeed the very reality of disease. One of the best known works on  this subject is by…

  • Echocardiogram: the first ultrasound picture of the moving heart

    Göran Wettrell Sweden   Figure 1. The first recorded echocardiogram from 29 October 1953. Upper panel echo from anterior chestwall (E1) to the posterior wall of the left ventricle (E2). Lower panel echo (E2) of the posterior left ventricular wall recorded at a larger scale (cm).  Image from the South Swedish Society of Medical History.…

  • Maude Abbott and the early rise of pediatric cardiology

    Göran Wettrell Lund University, Sweden   In December 1898 Dr. Maude Elizabeth Abbott, assistant curator at the medical museum of McGill University in Canada, was sent to study museums and other institutions in Washington, D.C. In Baltimore she met Dr. William Osler, professor of medicine and one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins Medical…