Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Menelik II

  • Leo Tolstoy: Medical

    Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), one of literature’s greatest novelists, lived through an age of intense change in medicine. Nineteenth-century Russia was a country caught between ancient folk remedies and the rise of modern scientific practice, and Tolstoy himself straddled both worlds. His health was fragile, his… Read more

  • Upton Sinclair

    Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) stands as one of the most influential American writers of the early twentieth century, remembered less for literary elegance than for his unflinching exposure of social injustices. His novels and journalistic investigations, often described as “muckraking,” combined a deep sympathy for working… Read more

  • Plato: Medical

    Plato, the Athenian philosopher of the fourth century BCE, is remembered chiefly for his dialogues on ethics, politics, and metaphysics. Yet embedded within his philosophical works are numerous reflections on medicine and the human body. Living in a time when Greek medicine was undergoing a… Read more

  • Do machines dream of the human hand?

    Elie NajjarNottingham, United Kingdom Imagine this: a machine that can see your heartbeat, read your spine, and calculate your risk of death better than your doctor can. Now ask yourself: does it understand you? Does it care if you live or die? The question is… Read more

  • Shaping science and education: The contributions of Dr. William H. Welch

    Mikaela MelnychukJuhi PatelNoel BrownleeBlacksburg, Virginia William H. Welch was an American physician renowned for his work in pathology, public health, bacteriology, and as the “father of American medical education.”1,2 He was part of the “Big Four” founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was the… Read more

  • Mencken: Medical

    Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956), the caustic “Sage of Baltimore,” earned lasting fame as journalist, critic, and satirist. Best remembered for The American Language (1919 and its subsequent expansions), his multi-volume study of how Americans shaped English, Mencken also trained his sharp gaze on medicine, physicians,… Read more

  • Theodore Dreiser

    Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) occupies a unique and often controversial place in American literature. Best remembered for his unflinching realism, his exploration of ambition, desire, and social constraint, and his massive, detail-laden novels, Dreiser was both acclaimed and censured during his lifetime. His works, particularly Sister… Read more

  • W. Somerset Maugham: Medical

    William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) is remembered primarily as a master of the short story and as a novelist whose lucid style made him one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. Yet beneath his literary reputation lies another identity: that of a… Read more

  • Victor Hugo: Medical

    Victor Hugo (1802–1885), towering figure of French Romanticism, is remembered primarily for his vast literary achievements—Les Misérables, Notre-Dame de Paris, and countless poems that gave voice to the downtrodden and the exiled. Yet, woven into his life and works are subtle but significant medical threads.… Read more

  • The botched autopsy of president John F. Kennedy

    Adrian HernandezNoel BrownleeBlacksburg, Virginia The forensic autopsy of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was full of mistakes that gave rise to subsequent controversies. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, during an official visit to Dallas, Texas. He was in the right seat of… Read more

  • Herman Melville: Medical

    Herman Melville (1819–1891), best remembered for his monumental novel Moby-Dick, was a writer whose life and work were profoundly shaped by medical themes. Although he is often placed within the canon of American Romanticism, Melville’s writings reveal not only philosophical and theological concerns but also… Read more

  • “The pissing evil” before insulin

    JMS PearceHull, England There are many excellent descriptions of the history of diabetes, and of the nineteenth- and particularly twentieth-century discoveries of the secretion of insulin by the beta cells of the pancreatic islets of Langerhans.1,2 (See Table) However, the earlier history of diabetes is… Read more