Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Robert Southey

  • Book review: Albemarle Street: Portraits, personalities and presentations at the Royal Institution

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom In this fascinating book, the late Professor Meurig Thomas, a distinguished chemist, former Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and an accomplished popularizer of science, tells the story of one of Britain’s greatest scientific institutions, which for over 200 years has been responsible for many of the great scientific advances of…

  • Airs and graces: Humphry Davy and science as performance

    Alan BleakleySennen, West Cornwall, United Kingdom The setting is 1799 in Clifton, Bristol, in the southwest of England; and there is something important in the air. A “Pneumatic Institute” has been set up to investigate the potential uses of newly isolated gases such as nitrous oxide in medicine. Humphry Davy, a young, ambitious scientist from…

  • Coleridge and the albatross syndrome

    Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain 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 culotte, my veins uncontaminated with one drop of Gentility.” He had an amazing…