Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Review of Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Handbook to the Heart of Medicine

  • Doctoring while pregnant

    Katie TaylorOakland, California, United States “Are you sexually active?”  “No, but you are,” a patient, one day in early spring, responds. Her timing is good, and the point is obvious. I am twenty weeks pregnant and showing, belly at two-thirds basketball.  When I tell an… Read more

  • Patient choice—Is it always appropriate?

    Denis ChenNewcastle-under-Lyme, United Kingdom  Beauchamp and Childress published Principles of Biomedical Ethics in 1979, introducing the “Four Principles” of medical ethics: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice.1 They argued that “best” treatment depends on patient preferences and applied to all cultures and societies. These principles were… Read more

  • Gangrene, history, and war

    Among the many afflictions that have plagued soldiers in war, gangrene has been one of the most devastating and feared. Caused by the death of tissue because of lack of blood supply or infection, gangrene has haunted military campaigns since antiquity. Hippocrates described the condition,… Read more

  • Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829): Pioneer of evolutionary thought

    The French naturalist and biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was one of the earliest proponents of the evolutionary theory. Born in 1744 into an aristocratic family in Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardy, he initially pursued a military career but following a severe illness turned to zoology and botany. By the… Read more

  • Early observations of the pulse

    JMS PearceHull, England Over the centuries, various devices bearing names now unfamiliar (Clepsydra, water clock, pulsilogium, Sphygmologia, Pulse Watch) were used to measure the pulse.The examination of the pulse to assist in diagnosis and prognosis dates back to ancient Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese physicians. Because… Read more

  • De l’acromegalie: Maladie de Pierre Marie

    JMS PearceHull, England Pierre Marie (1853–1940) described two patients in Charcot’s clinic who showed enlargement of the extremities and face, for which he proposed the term acro-megalie.1 He established and named acromegaly as distinct from other causes of somatic overgrowth. He also acknowledged Saucerotte’s unmistakable… Read more

  • Finding our way back to healing

    Frances MilatMelbourne, Australia “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” —Mary Oliver  Early in 2020, as my family flew home to Australia from a medical sabbatical in the United States, we started to hear reports of serious illness and death among… Read more

  • The diverticulum of Meckel

    Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger, a German anatomist, identified and described Meckel’s diverticulum in 1809, building on earlier observations by Fabricius Hildanus in the sixteenth century. The diverticulum is the most common congenital abnormality of the gastrointestinal tract, found in about 2% of the population.… Read more

  • Francis Glisson and his capsule

    Francis Glisson (1597–1677) was a highly successful physician, so famous in London that in 1668 he was consulted along with Ashley Cooper and Thomas Sydenham to advise whether the future Earl of Shaftesbury should undergo surgery to drain a perihepatic abscess. In 1650, he published… Read more

  • A gastrointestinal quartet

    These four individuals, despite their promising, euphonious names, did not write great operas. They were mere anatomists and worked on the area where the pancreas and gallbladder ducts meet to enter the duodenum. The most senior of the group was the German Johann Georg Wirsung… Read more

  • Medical teaching from ancient civilizations to the nineteenth century

    Patrick FiddesAustralia The perception that medicine’s contemporary teaching practices were introduced by innovative Modern Era1 physicians does not recognize the original contributions of ancient forefathers. Medicine’s earliest teaching records exist in ancient Sanskrit. They provide “detailed information concerning the training of doctors”2 in Akkadian where… Read more

  • Sir Peter Medawar and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance

    At Oxford during World War II, Peter Medawar and his colleagues made the remarkable observation that patients pre-treated in early life with embryotic cells did not reject skin grafts from unrelated donors. This gave rise to the concept of acquired immunological tolerance and revolutionized the… Read more