Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hull

  • A note on handedness

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Handedness (chirality) refers to the preferential use of one hand over the other. It is a matter of degree; it is seldom absolute. Population left and right preference existed in the Neanderthals (lived from 400,000 to about 40,000 years ago) onwards. Only homo sapiens amongst the great apes shows strong…

  • 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…

  • Multiple sclerosis: Early descriptions

    JMS Pearce Hull, England Clinical MS: Augustus D’Este, McKenzie It was almost two centuries ago that the best known and possibly the first detailed patient’s description of multiple sclerosis (MS) was recorded. It survives in the diaries (1822-48) and almanac of Sir Augustus D’Este, the Harrovian grandson of King George III.1,2 In December 1822, when he…

  • Plain Words, or pandemic medical gobbledygook

    JMS PearceHull, England The great essayist and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) once said: “Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past.” I suggest that the problems posed by writers who fail to convey meaning are not new.1,2 As long ago as 1713 the Scriblerus Club was founded to ridicule…

  • John Dalton

    JMS PearceHull, England John Dalton (1766–1844) (Fig 1) is one of the most revered scientists of the last 250 years. His origins were humble. He was the son of Deborah and Joseph Dalton, a weaver, both members of the Society of Friends. He was born in a thatched cottage in Eaglesfield near Cockermouth in the…

  • Joseph Merrick, “The Elephant Man”

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom As a specimen of humanity, Merrick was ignoble and repulsive; but the spirit of Merrick, if it can be seen in the form of the living, would assume the figure of an upstanding and heroic man . . .6 The life of Joseph Merrick, also known as “the Elephant Man,”…

  • The X Club

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Charles Babbage, who conceived the first automatic digital computer, published in 1830 Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. This stimulated the formation of several new groups that aimed to further scientific progress and exchange of ideas. These were distinct from Britain’s nineteenth century gentlemen’s social clubs and were…

  • The benefit of literature to a medical student

    Martin ConwillUnited Kingdom In a letter to Benjamin Bailey in 1817, John Keats, who only one year prior was a medical student himself, wrote: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination – what the imagination sees as beauty must be truth.”1 This proclamation can be…