National Health Service - Hektoen International

Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19

July 26, 2022

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of How the NHS Coped with COVID-19 by Ellen Welch. 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 […]

Book review: Understanding the NHS

June 14, 2022

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Book cover of Understanding the NHS by Andy Stein, 2022. 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 […]

The discoverers of aspirin

September 3, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Proc Royal Soc 1763, Salix Edmund Stone Willow bark. Source. 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 […]

Dr. AJ Cronin: Still persona non grata?

June 14, 2021

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Harry Fain, coal loader. Inland Steel Company, Wheelwright #1 & 2 Mines, Wheelwright, Floyd County, Kentucky. Russell Lee. September 1946. National Archives. Via Wikimedia. Public Domain. “I have written all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness . . . The horrors and inequities detailed […]

COVID-19 and 1665: Learning from Daniel Defoe

April 12, 2021

Brian Birch Southampton, Hampshire, UK London plague victims being buried in 1665, one of nine scenes from John Dunstall’s Plague broadsheet (1666). Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. 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.” […]

Alternatives to blood transfusion

January 13, 2020

Geraldine Miller Liverpool, England Wiliam Harvey demonstrating the circulation of the blood. iStock. 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 […]

You’re no fi’ Glasgow: memories of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary

February 22, 2017

Christopher Frank Kingston, Canada The Glasgow Royal Infirmary 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 […]