Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: multitasking

  • The problem with drinking (water) on airplanes

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink.”– The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) In the year 2020, 4.5 billion people flew on commercial aircraft. The previous year saw US airlines carry over 900 million passengers, and only 13%… Read more

  • John Morgan, founder of public medical education in America

    John Morgan was born in 1735, grandson of David Morgan, a Quaker who emigrated to America from Wales around the year 1700. His father was Evan Morgan, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who lived at the corner of Market and Second Streets and was a friend… Read more

  • ReJoycing in words and medicine

    Fergus ShanahanCork, IrelandEamonn QuigleyHouston, Texas, United States Making mejical history all over the show!-James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (FW) 514.2-31 James Joyce (1882–1941) is celebrated for his portrayal of the lives of ordinary people in his native city. Like many of the great writers, he had… Read more

  • Important figures in the history of neuropsychiatry

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The life of William Alwyn Lishman (1931–2021) was dedicated to neuropsychiatry.1-2 His classic textbook, Organic Psychiatry (1978), is a foundational book for neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physiatrists. Lishman was the first UK professor of neuropsychiatry whose “abiding message was that neuropsychiatry… Read more

  • Tobacco: Dr. Monardes’ miracle cure

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “[Tobacco] is an hearb of great affirmation for the excellent vertues that it hath.”1– Nicolás Monardes, MD (translated by John Frampton, 1577) “A custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs…”2– James I… Read more

  • The name of gratitude

    Giulio NicitaFlorence, Italy Florence was covered in a blanket of snow. Only three patients were sitting in Guido’s waiting room. Others had canceled because of the weather. A young pregnant woman waited with her husband and was soon ushered into the office. When the couple… Read more

  • Gioachino Rossini: Opera, cuisine, and gonorrhea

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Born in a family of musicians in Pesaro, Italy, Gioachino Rossini1 displayed inordinate talent from an early age, encouraged by his mother Anna, a notable singer, so that by the age of six, he was already playing the triangle in his… Read more

  • Love thy neighbour?: Peace-loving primates

    JMS PearceHull, England One of the greatest mysteries about human beings is the contrast between their intelligence, inventiveness, creativity and their extraordinary compulsion for self-destruction and violence. How can humans, blessed with compassion, charity and sympathy, combined with knowledge, self–awareness and understanding, so readily embrace… Read more

  • Röntgen’s birthplace

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom November 8th is World Radiology Day and celebrates the discovery of X-rays by Röntgen, who was a fifty-year-old relatively unknown physics professor at the University of Wurzburg in 1895 when he made his important discovery.   Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born… Read more

  • “A conspicuous place in the annals of murder”: The anatomy murders of Burke and Hare

    Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States In 1828 Scotland, two men committed a series of crimes that would earn them, as a contemporary newspaper described, “a conspicuous place in the annals of murder.”1 To both contemporaries and modern audiences, the gruesome story of Burke and Hare… Read more

  • Tales of the psychosomatic in the Lyrical Ballads

    Stewart JustmanMissoula, Montana, United States The year 1800 saw the publication of John Haygarth’s historic pamphlet Of the Imagination as a Cause and as a Cure of Disorders of the Body, an inquiry into what we now know as the nocebo and placebo effects. The… Read more

  • Aphorisms from Latham

    Peter Mere Latham, born in 1789, was appointed physician to the Middlesex Hospital at the age of 26 and elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians three years later. He joined St Bartholomew’s in 1827 and became physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria in 1837.… Read more