Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Ignaz Semmelweis

  • Can behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia salvage Semmelweis?

    Faraze A. Niazi Jack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States   Ignaz Semmelweis. 1818 – 1865. Age 47 years at death. Via Wikimedia. Remember me for the mind I had; not the mind a disease created.  Few physicians have made a more significant observation than did Ignaz Semmelweis.1 In 1847 he took over two…

  • Budapest: medicine and paprika

    L. J. Sandlow George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   The Magyars, ancestors of modern Hungarians, came from the region of the Ural Mountains and invaded Europe around AD 800. Crossing the Carpathian Mountains, they conquered the Pannonian plain and established a large and important medieval kingdom. In 1526 they were defeated at the decisive…

  • Leaders in the development of Western obstetric practice

    Sara Buck The history of obstetrics contains too many notable figures to simply select six key leaders in its development. However, as Laura Kaplan notes in “Changes in Childbirth in the US,” featured in the current issue, modern obstetrics has been greatly influenced by the invention and modernization of the forceps (Chamberlen and Smellie), the…

  • Alexander Gordon and puerperal fever

    C. John ScottAberdeen, Scotland The epidemic of childbed (puerperal) fever that struck the city of Aberdeen, Scotland, between December 1789 and March 1792 was unusual. It occurred not in the dirty, crowded, and ill-ventilated wards of lying-in hospitals, but throughout the city and surrounding villages. Serendipitously, one doctor cared for most of the patients. This…