Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: pharmacists

  • Middle Ages, Middlemarch, and the mid-twentieth century: Idealism at risk

    William Marshall Tucson, AZ   From Stories of a Country Doctor (1891) by Willis P. King, p. 155. Philadelphia: Hummel and Parmele. Via Internet Archive. Public domain. The dissatisfaction with modern medicine felt by both patients and doctors occurs despite unprecedented advances and successes in disease treatment and prevention. Corporate Medicine (huge healthcare conglomerates that…

  • Nicholas Culpeper and Herbal Medicine

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig. 1 Nicholas Culpeper Apart from crude measures such as amputation and surgery without anesthesia, most medical treatments were ineffective until the twentieth century. Herbal remedies dominated from the time of ancient Hindu and Chinese cultures. Herbals were used by the Greek scholar Theophrastus (371 – 287 BC) and by…

  • Apothecaries vs. physicians

    Two paintings of pharmacies are shown here: a Medical practitioner taking a lady’s pulse in a pharmacy (Wellcome Library) by Emili Casals I Camps (1882) and The Apothecary by Pietro Longhi, from the Accademia in Venice (1752). The man taking the woman’s pulse in the Casals painting is probably a physician, and the one looking…

  • Partners in healing: An early renaissance painting depicting the partnership of the divine with the physicians Cosmas and Damian

    Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States In many cultures the practice of healing was perceived as a combined effort by physicians and the divine. Florentine Renaissance hospitals had churches and cloisters in their complexes where displayed works of art reminded patients and their families of God’s curing powers. Meant to invoke…