Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: metabolism

  • Archibald Edward Garrod: Inborn errors of metabolism

    JMS PearceHull, England It is given to very few to invent a new class of diseases and to even fewer one that has survived subsequent scrutiny. Archibald Garrod, KCMG DM LLD FRCP FRS (1857–1936) (Fig 1), was born in London into an unusually talented family. He was the fourth son of Sir Alfred Baring Garrod,…

  • The Doctors Cori, carbohydrate metabolism, and the Nobel prize

    Energy in animals and humans is stored in the body in the form of glycogen. Starch, a similar molecule but less branched, serves the same function in plants. Glycogen, discovered by Claude Bernard in 1856, is stored primarily in the liver (about 120 grams) and in muscle (about 400 grams), and to a lesser amount…

  • Animality revisited in times of the coronavirus: A fable

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Imagine, as painters have done, representatives of animal species congregated in an assembly (Fig. 1). A man comes to address this motley crowd in this way: “You guys [he purposefully adopts this condescending language] have recently wronged us. Let me start by reminding you that you did not discover fire;…