London - Hektoen International

Epidemic cholera and Joseph William Bazalgette

December 22, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Joseph Bazalgette. Photo by Lock & Whitfield. 1877. National Portrait Gallery London. Via Wikimedia Rampant epidemics of cholera took many lives in the Victorian era. These epidemics were finally overcome with the discovery that cholera was a waterborne infection and by massive reconstruction of the […]

Book review: Medicine in the Middle Ages

November 19, 2021

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Medicine in the Middle Ages by Juliana Cummings. In the history of Western Europe, the Middle Ages refers to the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century through the beginning of the Renaissance in the 1500s. These thousand years were characterized […]

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

November 12, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Credit: Walery, published by Sampson Low & Co. in February 1889. Via Wikimedia. Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson were the first women physicians in the United States and Britain.1 Both were born in England. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-I9I0) was born in Bristol but […]

Maligning Macleod and “Bettering” Best: the discovery of insulin as depicted in film before Michael Bliss

October 28, 2021

James R. Wright Jr. Calgary, Alberta, Canada JJR Macleod circa 1928. Credit: University of Toronto. Via Wikimedia. In 1921, Fred Banting and Charley Best, working under the supervision of JJR Macleod, made crude pancreatic extracts from duct-ligated dog, fetal bovine, or whole adult bovine pancreata and used these to treat diabetes in depancreatized dogs. […]

Novice doctor at Guy’s Hospital in 1964

October 21, 2021

Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom Fig 1. “Entrance into that most noble Public Charity and admirable Medical Establishment Guy’s Hospital” Founded 1721 by Thomas Guy it was intended for the incurables rejected by neighboring St. Thomas’s Hospital—the foreground scene shows this restriction had ceased. The building on the east (left), Boland House was […]

The death of King George V

October 1, 2021

Seamus O’Mahony London, England Fig 1: Lord Dawson of Penn. Photograph by D. Wilding. Wellcome Collection. Copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London. Public Domain. Bertrand Dawson, Lord Dawson of Penn (1864-1945), was the most eminent British doctor in the years between the two world wars. He was both a skilled medical politician (twice president of the […]

Peter Panum and the “geography of disease”

August 18, 2021

Kathryne Dycus Madrid, Spain Peter Panum. Scan from P. Hansens “Illustreret Dansk Litteraturhistorie”, anden meget forøgede udgave, 2. bind, 1902. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia. In 1846, the Faroe Islands experienced an outbreak of measles, the likes of which had not been seen in sixty-five years. The Danish government called upon a newly graduated physician, […]

Motivation at work

July 19, 2021

Migel Jayasinghe UK This article was previously published by the author with EZineArticles in 2010. It has been edited by Hektoen International staff and republished here with the author’s permission. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Art by Chiquo. CC BY-SA 4.0. Via Wikimedia. After the industrial revolution, large numbers of workers were needed in mills and factories to mass produce […]

Bristol Children’s Hospital and esophageal atresia

May 21, 2021

Richard Spicer Bristol, United Kingdom Fig 1. Bristol Children’s Hospital 1885-2001. Photo by the author. Bristol Children’s Hospital The Children’s Hospital in Bristol began as the Free Institution for Diseases of Women and Children in 1857. In 1885 it moved to a purpose-built neo-Gothic building (Fig.1) and continued to treat women and children on […]

COVID-19 and 1665: Learning from Daniel Defoe

April 12, 2021

Brian Birch Southampton, Hampshire, UK London plague victims being buried in 1665, one of nine scenes from John Dunstall’s Plague broadsheet (1666). Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is an account of the 1665 Great Plague of London. Based on eyewitness experience, the undersigned initials “H. F.” […]