Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: National Health Service

  • Tinkering towards technology: Examples from the evolution of renal medicine in the UK

    Eric WillNicholas MarksUnited Kingdom “Tinkering” is a mindset that responds to calls for improvement or repair through piecemeal modification. It may involve novelty or rediscovery, and ranges from mechanics to imaging, the concrete to the abstract. A writer tinkers with a text, the artist with a canvas, the mechanic with an engine. It is generally…

  • Book review: Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles That Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) was born on July 5, 1948, and on the seventy-fifth anniversary of its existence, British journalist and broadcaster Isabel Hardman has produced a book using military analogies to focus on the many political battles and political contests that have shaped its current form. The…

  • Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom This work is a timely and important contribution to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc worldwide. Following the cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, things would never be the same again. In this book, the author has…

  • Book review: Understanding the NHS

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The National Health Service in the United Kingdom was founded in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, a Welsh Labour Party politician and health minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government. Bevan was a coal miner before entering Parliament in 1928. He had long campaigned for a free health service for all…

  • The discoverers of aspirin

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom In the short period between the years 1946-1950, three highly effective new drugs became available for clinical use in the newly established National Health Service. They were penicillin, streptomycin, and cortisone. Before this there were few potent drugs of proven benefit in the remedy of symptoms or disease. Since inflammation…

  • Dr. AJ Cronin: Still persona non grata?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “I have written all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness . . . The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed. This is not an attack against individuals but against a system.”1—AJ Cronin Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896–1981) was born in Scotland to…

  • COVID-19 and 1665: Learning from Daniel Defoe

    Brian BirchSouthampton, Hampshire, UK Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is an account of the 1665 Great Plague of London. Based on eyewitness experience, the undersigned initials “H. F.” suggest the author’s uncle, Henry Foe, as its primary source. Published in 1722, it stands as the most reliable and comprehensive account of the…

  • Alternatives to blood transfusion

    Geraldine MillerLiverpool, England In 1616 William Harvey first discovered how blood circulates around the body. This discovery stimulated research into transfusing blood from one person to another. Early attempts to replace blood began with liquids such as milk, both animal and human, urine, and beer. Sir Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century even suggested opium…

  • You’re no fi’ Glasgow: Memories of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary

    Christopher FrankKingston, Canada We know famous hospitals for the care they provide, for eminent physicians who have worked in them, or for their architectural heritage. Hospitals are rarely famous for their patients. The Glasgow Royal Infirmary dates back to the eighteenth century and is best known as the place where Sir Joseph Lister studied antiseptics.…