Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: John Hunter

  • Leonard Rowntree’s biography of James Parkinson

    Vivian McAlisterLondon, Ontario, Canada By the time of his death in 1824, seven years after writing a monograph on the “shaking palsy,” James Parkinson was nearly forgotten.1 Even today, few people know anything about him, despite the fact that his medical eponym is well known. Over 100 years ago, this knowledge gap troubled Leonard Rowntree,…

  • Grave robber or father of experimental surgery: A look into the life of John Hunter

    Julius BonelloKathy SlaterPeoria, Illinois, United States That the true idea of Life existed in the mind of John Hunter, I do not entertain the least doubt.– Samuel Taylor Coleridge The silence of the graveyard was broken by the grunts of laboring men and the sound of shovels slicing through fresh ground. “Shhhhh, don’t be so…

  • John Abernethy

    John Abernethy was born in London in 1764 and went to school in Wolverhampton, where he learned Latin and Greek, and graduated top of his class. He would have preferred to study law but his father insisted he choose medicine. At age fifteen, he was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon with a large,…

  • John Hunter, his wolf dogs, and the inherited smiles of Pomeranians

    Stephen MartinUnited Kingdom John Hunter, 1728-1793, was a polymathic doctor. Besides being an anatomist and clinician, he was also interested in early genetics, exemplified by his “Observations tending to shew that the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog, are all of the Same Species.”1 Hunter presented this paper to the Royal Society in 1787. (Fig 1) His…

  • Leeching and François-Joseph-Victor Broussais

    JMS PearceHull, England, UK The practice of bloodletting began with the Egyptians and was succeeded by the Greeks, Romans (including Galen), and healers in India. In medieval times it spread throughout Europe. The “leech craze” was so popular in the nineteenth century that it has been estimated that five to six million leeches per year…

  • The three contraries of Benjamin Franklin: “The gout, the stone and not yet master of all my passions”

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States On May 23, 1785, Benjamin Franklin wrote from Passy on the outskirts of Paris to George Whatley that “at Fourscore the three contraries that have befallen me, being subject to the Gout and the Stone, and not yet Master of all my passions.”1 It is a long letter and…

  • John Hunter, Harvey Cushing, and acromegaly

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States Introduction John Hunter and Harvey Cushing were two of the most preeminent surgeons of their eras. John Hunter is considered to be “The Father of British Surgery” and Harvey Cushing the “Father of American Neurosurgery.” They both became interested in acromegaly and in the process went to extreme lengths…

  • Thomas Young MD FRS (1773-1829): “The Last Man Who Knew Everything.”

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, UK It is impossible to place precisely Thomas Young (Fig 1) into any professional class. He was both physician and scientist, renowned for an astonishing range of theories and discoveries in optics, physics, physiology, hieroglyphics, and medicine. His sundry contributions were profound, original, and ingenious; he has with good reason been likened…

  • William Cullen (1710-1790)

    William Cullen ranks high among the illustrious members of the Scottish Enlightenment. Friend of Adam Smith and physician of David Hume, president of the Royal College of Physicians of Glasgow and later of Edinburgh, he was appointed physician to the King in Scotland and became one of the most popular professors at the University of…

  • Two great Scots: John and William Hunter

    B. Herold GriffithChicago, Illinois, United States Excerpted from a presentation at the meeting of the Society of Medical History of Chicago October 3, 2006 Of the many surgeons who have had ties to Glasgow over the past 500 years or so, the most famous were the Hunter brothers, and a century later, Sir Joseph Lister.…