Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Savilian Chair of Astronomy

  • Segregated people, segregated blood

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Are they afraid they’ll all turn black?Is that why our blood they lack?”1—From a poem by high school student Geraldyne Ghess In 1941, US leaders suspected that the country would soon be in a war “against a German aggressor, obsessed with ethnic… Read more

  • Fanny Hesse: Mother of microbiology

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Her contribution to bacteriology makes her immortal.”1—Medical historians Arthur Hitchens and Morris Leikind “C’est un grand progrès!”2—Louis Pasteur Fanny Hesse (neé Angelina Fanny Eilshemius, 1850–1935) was born in New York City, the oldest of ten children in a family of Dutch origin.… Read more

  • The nursing school in the Warsaw Ghetto

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Despite extreme hardship and abject terror, the nursing school in the Warsaw Ghetto continued to provide the highest level of nursing education possible.”1 The Warsaw Jewish Nursing School was established in 1923 as part of the Czyste (“clean” in Polish) Jewish Hospital.… Read more

  • The great uncertainty

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece It was one of those episodes that often appear in works of fiction: the unusual circumstance, the odd coincidence, the thunderbolt out of a clear sky; an event that upsets the usual order of things, injects suspense, and drives the story according… Read more

  • Young Hitler’s blindness in World War I

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel During World War I, Corporal Adolf Hitler became blind during a gas attack in the trenches. He was examined by a young Jewish military physician, Karl Kroner, whose differential diagnosis was blindness due to mustard gas, malingering, shellshock, and/or “hysterical” blindness.… Read more

  • The medspeak language: Modern Johnsonese?

    George ChristopherMichigan, United States Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was a prominent eighteenth-century writer whose compositions include literary reviews of the works of Shakespeare, Addison, Dryden, Milton, Pope, and other major authors; scathing commentaries on moral and political issues such as the institution of slavery and the… Read more

  • Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832): Medical aspects

    Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) is widely credited with inventing and popularizing the modern historical novel. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, he grew up during the intellectual ferment of the Scottish Enlightenment. At eighteen months, he developed a fever followed by permanent lameness in his right… Read more

  • Virginity now and then

    Virginity is sometimes regarded as an indelicate subject. It is also one of history’s most cultural artifacts, less a biological fact than a social fiction refined over millennia. At its most literal, it means to have never engaged in sexual intercourse. Over time, however, it… Read more

  • Medicine in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

    The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which existed from 1867 until its dissolution in 1918, was one of the most scientifically vibrant states in the world. Its medical culture, centered primarily in Vienna but extending across a sprawling, multiethnic realm, produced some of the most consequential advances in… Read more

  • The paradox of neurology

    Panayiota AntypasLaunceston, Tasmania, Australia Neurologists occupy a liminal zone, oscillating between a fascination with the complexity of the nervous system and an understanding of the devastating impact these diseases have on patients’ lives. During my medical student elective, I became immersed in this duality. Neurology… Read more

  • A wartime disaster that led to a cure in oncology

    Prasad IyerSingapore In the harbor of Bari on the night of December 2, 1943, the German Luftwaffe punctured the Italian coastline with fire and hit the SS John Harvey, a ship secretly carrying two thousand mustard gas bombs. A toxic soup of fuel oil and… Read more

  • The violent death of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s tragic poet

    Alexander Pushkin, the “Sun of Russian Poetry,” is credited with transforming old-fashioned Russian into a rich, modern, and vibrant language. According to Dostoevsky, “Pushkin came to Russia as a new guiding light, a brilliant illumination of our dark ways.” Nikolai Gogol wrote that “To move… Read more