Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hippocrates

  • Hippocrates by the bedside

    This rather unwell looking patient is being fed or medicated by a physician supposed to be Hippocrates, assisted by a wide-eyed female professional. De regimine acutorum was published in England in the thirteenth century. The image (on the left) is an enlarged historiated initial from the medieval illuminated manuscript (shown on the right). Highlighted Vignette…

  • Blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm: An inseparable balance?

    John Graham-PoleClydesdale, NS, Canada Life blood: Humor and health In 1960, I entered St. Bartholomew’s Medical School on a full classics scholarship. I was a devotee of Hippocrates, with high hopes of embarking on a path of uniting medical science with the healing arts. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” was…

  • Bloody beginnings of hematology

    Sherin Jose ChockattuBengaluru, India His pole, with pewter basins hung,Black, rotten teeth in order strung,Rang’d cups that in the window stood,Lin’d with red rags, to look like blood,Did well his threefold trade explain,Who shav’d, drew teeth, and breathd a vein —John Gay (The Goat Without a Beard, 1727) For over three millennia, self-taught physicians and…

  • There is power in the blood

    Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, UK “Carne fa carne e vino fa sango” [Meat makes flesh and wine makes blood]—Italian proverb Laura was covered in blood when the paramedics arrived at her house. Her husband, in a state of shock, had gathered every available towel in the vicinity, but it seemed too little and too late. Blood…

  • Wilder Penfield

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Wilder Penfield was not only a great surgeon and a great scientist, he was an even greater human being. -Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) (Fig. 1) was the most gifted pioneer of Canadian neurosurgery. He devised effective surgery for controlling intractable epilepsy…

  • The Red Cross and hematology pioneers

    Barnabas PastoryDar es Salaam, Tanzania Providing medical care to suffering humankind constitutes an important part of the Red Cross’ service scope. History records an important connection between the Red Cross and pioneers in the subject matter of blood. The humanitarian service of the Red Cross began between 1859 and 1863 with the advocacy efforts of…

  • The history and mystery of cupping

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Maybe your chest hurts from coughing, or maybe your muscles ache. Maybe you feel sluggish and anxious, worn out, and not sure why. There is a treatment, some say, for all of that and more. If it is done right, you only walk away with bruises—perfect circles in shades of…

  • Scurvy before James Lind

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Cures of disease are still relatively uncommon. Scurvy is an example of a disease well recognized but whose cause eluded doctors for centuries until an empirical curative remedy and later a specific cause were discovered. In more recent times Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in phthisis or consumption in 1882,…

  • Medicinal leeches in art and literature

    Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States For more than two thousand years, the extraordinary blood-sucking abilities of the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) provided physicians with an unusual if not bizarre alternative to venesection, cupping, and scarification for blood-letting their patients (Figure 1). This therapeutic use of leeches was described in the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Nicander…

  • Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding and the reputation of the medical profession 1742

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States In his first published novel from 1742, Henry Fielding chronicles the journey and foibles of three principle characters: the amenable Parson Adams, the so-called beautiful wench Fanny, and her paramour Joseph Andrews—the namesake of the novel.1 Adventures and misadventures befall the young protagonist Andrews, none the least falling in love…