Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: lymph nodes

  • The first effective chemotherapy for cancer

    Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States Sulfur mustard gas had no influence on the outcome of the battle at Ypres during World War I despite the many deaths and severe injuries it inflicted. Since then, chemical weapons have been used in conflicts at least fifteen times between 1919 and 2016—in the Iraq-Iran War, by…

  • The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore

    Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States In 1832, a paper entitled On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen was read to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London by its secretary, as Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) was not yet a member. In it, Hodgkin described the clinical histories and gross postmortem findings of seven…

  • Doctor Johnson and his ailments

    Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest English literary figures of all time, is remembered more for what he said than for what he wrote. Other writers may have been more successful or more profound, but none had as great a biographer as James Boswell.1 Boswell was twenty-two years old when he was first introduced to…

  • In a scan, darkly

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Every so often I browse through old patient records and before committing them to the shredder I read through the histories they contain. These visits to the past are useful and edifying, allowing a more detached consideration of the events. Has something changed in medical knowledge since then? Do the diagnosis and…