Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: neurosyphilis

  • William Richard Gowers MD., FRS.

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig. 1 Gowers’ Manual. A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System. J London: J. & A. Churchill 1886 The name Gowers is a name hallowed in the minds of most neurologists as one of the great founders of neurological medicine in the Victorian era. He is probably best remembered…

  • Delusions of being and nothingness

    Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez Mexico City, Mexico   Emil Cioran and his long-lost friends. Augustin Ramirez Bermudez. Jesus Ramirez Bermudez Private Collection In the late nineteenth century, the French physician Jules Cotard described patients with a delusional denial of bodily organs, self-existence, and the world. The woman originally described “believed that she had no brain, nerves, chest,…

  • The forgotten many of the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiments

    Harsh Patolia Roanoke, Virginia, United States   Inoculation site of participant. Image from the Records of Dr. John C. Cutler housed in the National Archives. In 2005, medical historian Dr. Susan Reverby foraged through boxes in the stuffy archives of the library of the University of Pittsburgh for the papers of Thomas Parran, the surgeon…

  • Joseph Babinski of the Babinski Sign

    Joseph Babinski. Portrait by Deschiens. US National Library of Medicine. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In 1848 populist revolutions swept across Europe, in Germany, France, and Italy—and also in Poland, where an uprising to gain independence from Russia was ruthlessly suppressed. To escape the repression that followed, Aleksander and Henryieta Babinski fled to France. Their son…