Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Renaissance

  • What can physicians learn from Benjamin Rush, blood, and the Red Cross?

    Ryan HillJamestown, Rhode Island, United States Despite the adamant opposition he encountered from many of his contemporaries, Dr. Benjamin Rush was undeterred; he was certain that bloodletting was the most prudent of all medical procedures and remained faithful to the practice. The late eighteenth century doctor received harsh criticism for his excessive use of this…

  • Christopher Wren and blood circulation

    Richard de GrijsSydney, AustraliaDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China “A young man of marvellous gifts who, when not yet sixteen years of age, advanced astronomy, gnomonics, statics, and mechanics by his distinguished discoveries, and from then on continues to advance these sciences. And truly he is the kind of man from whom I can shortly expect great things.”…

  • It is good to be the king: The French surgical revolution

    Julius BonelloAyesha HasanPeoria, Illinois, United States A belief held by the common people is that it is good to be royalty, a sentiment supported by descriptions in novels and depictions in movies. The best food, the finest clothes, and the most extravagant and opulent dwelling in the kingdom belonged to the king to use at…

  • Santa Maria Nuova: Curing and caring

    Michael MortellaroFlorida, USA The concept of a hospital for sick people first emerged in the western world in late medieval Italy. A prime example of this was the Florentine hospital Santa Maria Nuova, which the humanist Cristoforo Landino dubbed “the first hospital among Christians” in 1430.1 Italian hospitals of the Renaissance also left an impression…

  • Signs of diseases in art

    Chris ClarkExeter, United Kingdom “Every human being tells a story even if he never speaks.”1 Two paintings hang next to each other in the sumptuous Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome: The Rest on the flight to Egypt and Penitent Magdalen. Both are early works by Caravaggio, and these two diverse biblical women appear to have…

  • La Pieta

    Rachel FleishmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States A mother holds her dead child. His body flops open without resistance, freshly dead. His head is cocked back, shoulder lifted, arms release the last vestige of grip. Her face sullen, her hand beside him open and offering, she holds but does not touch her son. A single moment of…

  • The Anatomy of Michelangelo (1475-1564)

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Michelangelo Buonarroti was an exception to the rule that the qualities of many brilliant artists and composers are realized and extolled only after death. He was recognized by contemporaries as a genius, a “Hero of the High Renaissance,” the only artist of whom it was claimed in his lifetime that he…

  • Realdo Colombo (ca. 1515–1559)

    Although Italy during the Renaissance consisted of a mosaic of independent states, its inhabitants and particularly academicians seem to have moved freely from one city state to another. Thus it came about that the anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo was born and educated in the principality of Milan (in philosophy and later as an apothecary); was…

  • The curious tale of Leonardo Da Vinci and the spherical uterus

    John MassieParkville, Victoria, Australia Leonardo Da Vinci had one of the greatest minds in history. Accomplished in so many fields of both the arts and science, he challenged contemporary thinking, and was one of the early Renaissance artists to use dissection of corpses in order to understand the human form. His anatomical drawings reveal a…

  • Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man

    Philip R. Liebson In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is no known…