nutrition - Hektoen International

Physicians and photosynthesis

October 24, 2022

JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Portrait of J.B. van Helmont, 1683. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. The importance of plants in nutrition and in the environment of human and animal species needs no emphasis. How plants obtain their food and how they grow were unsolved mysteries until photosynthesis was discovered. It was generally believed […]

Infectious diseases in the Civil War

March 31, 2022

Lloyd Klein San Francisco, California, United States Dr. Louis Pasteur. Photo by Paul Nadar, 1878. Wellcome Collection. Via Wikimedia. CC BY 4.0. The main cause of death during the American Civil War was not battle injury but disease. About two-thirds of the 620,000 deaths of Civil War soldiers were caused by disease, including 63% […]

Book review: Greco-Roman Medicine and What it Can Teach Us Today

December 16, 2021

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover: Greco-Roman medicine and what it can teach us today. The Republic of Rome was founded in the sixth century BC. In the third century BC, the western Roman Empire began to spread outside the borders of Italy. Roman rule came to Britain in AD 43 with the […]

Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso

January 29, 2021

Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Imaginary portrait. Sancho I El Craso. José María Rodríguez de Losada. between circa 1892 and circa 1894. Public domain. Via Wikimedia. “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients […]

Walter Kempner (1903–1997) and his rice diet

December 8, 2020

Photo of Walter Kempner. Source. Walter Kempner, the doctor with the thick German accent who came to America to escape from the Nazis, was born in 1903. Son of two bacteriologists who had both worked on tuberculosis, he graduated in medicine from the University of Heidelberg in 1928 and subsequently worked there and in Berlin. When […]

Food as medicine

April 15, 2020

Keerthi Gondy Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels In my family, food is the language of love. A warm meal is the way we say “I love you.” Whenever I get sick, my mother prepares a pot of spicy turmeric soup and honey lemon tea. When my brother threw a game-winning strike […]

All blood runs red

February 6, 2020

Mel Diomampo Houston, TX Miss Clara Barton. Mathew Brady. ca. 1860 – ca. 1865. US National Archives. The American Red Cross (ARC) is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and other disasters. Based on the Geneva Convention of 1949, its work primarily consists of responding to […]

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor

May 6, 2019

Otto von Bismarck was born into a family of Junkers in Brandenburg in 1815. Becoming prime minister of Prussia at the age of forty-seven in 1862, he remained in power for twenty-eight years. During this time he united Germany under Prussian hegemony; defeated Denmark, Austria, and France in three wars; annexed Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace, and Lorraine […]

Fasting: for body and spirit

April 22, 2019

Isabel Azevedo Porto, Portugal St. Catherine of Siena was known for rigorous fasting and abstinence. Her fast was so severe at times that it was questioned by her sisterhood and the clergy, who insisted she eat properly. Having struggled with the obesity epidemic for decades,1,2 the scientific and health care communities are now giving […]

Rachel Fleming and the non-reality of “racial types”

February 11, 2019

Barry Bogin United Kingdom Human “races” as depicted in the 19th century Nordisk familjebok (Nordic Family Book Encyclopedia). Each person in the painting depicts one “race” of Asiatic people. Today, anthropologists and biologist reject such “race” categorization. The differences between human groups are better ascribed to biological plasticity. During the early twentieth century several […]