Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: London

  • Walter Russell Brain DM FRCP FRS (1895–1966)

    JMS Pearce  East Yorks, England   Lord Brain. From The Royal London Hospital. Source Russell Brain (Fig 1) was born at Clovelly, Denmark Road, Reading, on 23 October 1895, the only son of Walter John Brain, solicitor, and his wife, Edith Alice. A quiet, reserved man of enormous intellect and integrity, he was revered as…

  • Jack London’s cloudy crystal ball

    Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode Island, United States   The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London. Open Library, an initiative of the Internet Archive. The COVID-19 pandemic has given quarantined readers new opportunities to discover the literature of plagues and epidemics. Many people—in order to give context to the present pandemic—have turned to books like Albert Camus’…

  • William Marsden, surgeon and founder of the Royal Free and Royal Marsden Hospitals, London

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Portrait of William Marsden by Thomas Illidge 1850. Picture in public domain. Source To found one hospital is a fairly unusual achievement; to found two is a rare feat indeed. William Marsden, a nineteenth-century British doctor, founded both the Royal Free Hospital and the Royal Cancer Hospital (now known…

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

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, UK   Fig 1. Thomas Young. Mezzotint by G. R. Ward, 1855, after Sir T. Lawrence. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) 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…

  • Ethics, feminism, and cosmetic surgery

    Unaiza WaheedLondon In Reshaping the Female Body, Kathy Davis expresses surprise when a feminist friend announces she is considering breast augmentation surgery: “[She] was very critical of the sufferings women have to endure because their bodies do not meet the normative requirements of feminine beauty,” yet she still felt pressure to seek cosmetic surgery for…

  • Thomas Keith: Pioneer photographer and pioneer surgeon

    Iain Macintyre Edinburgh, Scotland Figure 1. Thomas Keith. Artist and date unknown. Etching with Keith’s signature (image reproduced with permission Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh). “His success so far outstripped that of all other operators, that it became a wonder and admiration of surgeons all over the world.”1 So wrote J Marion Sims (1813–1883),…

  • The most enduring fictional character in literature, Sherlock Holmes, created by a physician

    Marshall Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   Figure 1. Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Homes) with pipe and Nigel Bruce (Dr. John H. Watson). A scene from the film “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” in 1939. The plots rarely adhered to the Conan Doyle story plots and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and Dr. Watson were…

  • Charles Richard Box: physician, pathologist, and infectious disease pioneer

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK   Charles Richard Box by Lafayette. Half-plate nitrate negative. 30 August 1928. NPG x42689. Reproduced with Permission from National Portrait Gallery, London. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. The name Charles Richard Box is perhaps not as well-known as some of the medical contemporaries of his time. He had a brilliant career in…

  • Neville Samuel Finzi—British radiotherapy pioneer

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Neville Samuel Finzi was born on June 25, 1881.1 He was the son of Gerald Finzi’s uncle, Leon, who was also a doctor. Gerald Finzi was a British composer famous for his song cycles, choral music, and reflective instrumental and orchestral works including a violin and cello concerto. Neville attended University…

  • The first description of DNA: A six million dollar letter from Francis to Michael Crick

    Marshall A. Lichtman  Rochester, New York, United States Figure 1. The boyish appearing James Watson (left) and the Francis Crick with their three-dimensional model of DNA in their Cavendish Laboratory office at Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Circa 1953. Photo credit: A. Barrington Brown/Science Photo Library. Via the Rockefeller University Digital Commons. In the April 25,…