Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Nicolas Roberto Robles

  • The romantic suicide: Karoline von Günderrode

    Nicolás Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Suicide, often occurring as an impulsive gesture or from underlying depression, has long been an important cause of death among young people, as exemplified within recent memory by the wave of suicides that followed the death of Marilyn Monroe. Historically, in the preromantic period, it was precipitated by the suicide of…

  • August Von Platen, inspiration for Death in Venice

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBandajoz, Spain Weil da, wo Schönheit waltet, Liebe waltet Because where beauty reigns, love reigns – Sonette aus Venedig. August von Platen was a German poet whose death inspired Thomas Mann to write Death in Venice. Descended from an impoverished noble family, he attended the Cadet School at Munich from ages ten to…

  • Guadalupe: One of Spain’s oldest schools of medicine

    Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. The Monastery of Guadalupe. Main entrance. Photo by Rafa G. Recuero. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 ES. Guadalupe, a small Spanish town in the district of Cáceres, Extremadura, arose around a monastery. Legend says that a shepherd named Gil Cordero was looking for a stray sheep when…

  • Sir George Pickering and the low salt diet

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London, UK. Photo by Enric likes Funk. 2008. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. As a young man George Pickering was interested in his native Northumbrian countryside and intended to study agriculture. Persuaded later to read for a degree in biochemistry or physiology, he…

  • Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso

    Nicolás Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients are at risk of sudden death . . . they are vulnerable to having a stroke, hemiplegia, palpitations, diarrhea, dizziness . . . men are…

  • Too many doctors: The death of Friedrich III

    Nicolas Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Kaiser Friedrich Museum (currently Bode Museum) on the Monbijou Bridge in Berlin, 1905. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Un médico cura; dos, dudan; tres, muerte segura. One doctor, health; two, doubt; three, certain death. -Spanish saying. Friedrich III of Hohenzollern was the second Kaiser of Germany and eighth King…

  • Absinthe: The green fairy

    Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Green Muse. Albert Maignan. 1895. Via Wikimedia Commons “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in…

  • Coleridge and the albatross syndrome

    Nicolás Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Contemporary portrait. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the tenth and last child of the vicar of Ottery Saint Mary near Devonshire, England, was born on October 21, 1772. In vivid letters recounting his early years he describes himself as “a genuine Sans…

  • Novalis: The white plague and the blue flower

    Nicolas Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Bust of Novalis at Nikolaifriedhof (Weiβenfels). Photo by Doris Antony on Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-2.5. Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr1 von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of early German Romanticism. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name “Novalis” from his twelfth-century…

  • Doctor Schiller

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Portrait of Friedrich Schiller by Gerhard von Kügelgen. Goethe-Museum. Public Domain.   Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was born on November 10, 1759 in Marbach, Württemberg, Germany. His father, Johann Caspar Schiller, was a regimental surgeon in the service of Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg. Schiller (1759–1805) is…