Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Michael Faraday

  • Book review: Albemarle Street: Portraits, personalities and presentations at the Royal Institution

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom In this fascinating book, the late Professor Meurig Thomas, a distinguished chemist, former Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and an accomplished popularizer of science, tells the story of one of Britain’s greatest scientific institutions, which for over 200 years has been responsible for many of the great scientific advances of…

  • A “most perfect interchange”

    Satyabha TripathiLucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India [Lydgate held] the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good […] he was an emotional creature, with a flesh-and-blood sense of…

  • Kathleen (Yardley) Lonsdale DSc., FR

    JMS PearceHull, England Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) (Fig 1) like her contemporary Dorothy Hodgkin was one of the women pioneers in a man’s world of professional scientists.1 She developed original techniques in X-ray diffraction of crystals to determine the structure of a molecule. This led to studies of the benzene ring, structure of drugs, and investigations…

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

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom 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 as the Royal Marsden Hospital) in London. William Marsden was born in August 1796 in…

  • The Philosophers’ Stone: History and myth

    S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States “Of all Elixirs, Gold is supreme and the most important for us . . . gold can keep the body indestructible . . . Drinkable gold will cure all illnesses, it renews and restores.”—Paracelsus (1493–1541 AD) – Coelum Philosophorum1 “The universal medicine which cures all human and metallic diseases is…