Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: guillotine

  • A tale of three doctors

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “How true it is that it is difficult to benefit mankind without some unpleasantness resulting for oneself.”– Dr. Edme-Claude Bourru, giving Dr. Guillotin’s eulogy Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, M.D. (1738–1814) was an ex-Jesuit priest, a practicing physician, and a politician just before and during the French Revolution.1,2 He was an opponent of capital punishment…

  • J.I. Guillotin: reformer and humanitarian

    It is a strange quirk of fortune that the name of a reformer and humanitarian who spent his life in the search of social justice should have become associated with a device used to decapitate people. Yet such was the fate of Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Trained in his youth as a Jesuit, he then went…