Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Schizophrenia in Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary

  • The self-destructive urge

    JMS PearceHull, England Preservation of life is often an unwritten axiom of medical practice. Sections on therapeutics in medical books and papers usually assume the obvious: aim to preserve or extend life. They rarely discuss the alternative harm or good that results from allowing nature… Read more

  • Lydia Sherman, serial poisoner

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Poisons were easily obtainable in the nineteenth century, sold for use as household cleaners, vermin control, and in agriculture. By the 1820s, Americans feared being secretly poisoned, “and considered the incidence of murder by poison to be quite high.”1 This “poison panic”… Read more

  • Book review: Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The subjects of ageing, death, and immortality have long preoccupied human thoughts and culture. The ancient Egyptians practiced mummification out of a belief in an afterlife. Buddhists and Hindus believe in reincarnation with the immortal soul living on in another body.… Read more

  • Willebrand disease discovered in a girl from the Aland archipelago

    In 1924 the Finnish physician Erik von Willebrand was consulted about the case of a five-year- old girl from the self-governing autonomous Swedish-speaking region of the Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea. Born on February 1, 1870, in Vasa, Finland, von Willebrand had graduated in… Read more

  • Onions: Soup, medicine, and crocodile tears

    What should well-educated persons be expected to know about onions? They have probably eaten them since childhood, or perhaps had to help their mothers in the kitchen and shed crocodile tears even though they did not feel particularly sad. If chemically inclined they might have… Read more

  • The curious history of autologous blood transfusions: Syringes and cheesecloths

    Denis ChenNewcastle-under-Lyme, United Kingdom  Autologous blood transfusion, the infusion of a patient’s own blood, is a relatively recent procedure. It was preceded historically by the classical descriptions of the blood by Hippocrates1 and Galen2; by the discovery of the circulation of blood by William Harvey… Read more

  • Earliest instance of Alzheimer’s disease as defense in a 1924 homicide trial

    Saty Satya-MurtiJoseph LockhartSanta Maria, California, United States In the mid-twentieth century, few doctors and even fewer members of the public had ever heard of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Interest focused on senile dementia and arteriosclerotic vascular dementia while presenile dementia was thought to be uncommon and… Read more

  • Is Betteridge’s law valid?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “[I am]…best-known for something that was intended as a throwaway remark.”1—Ian Betteridge Ian Betteridge, a technology journalist, stated in 2009, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no.’” He meant, of course, only yes-or-no type… Read more

  • Ophthalmic surgeon Evan Harries Harries-Jones

    Frederick O’DellNorthampton, United Kingdom “If Evan Harries Harries-Jones had lived for one more day, he would have completed half-a-century’s service as ophthalmic surgeon to the Northampton General Hospital…”1 Born in 1874 in Rhyl, in the county of Flintshire, Wales, Harries-Jones was proud of being Welsh… Read more

  • Pigs as food and victims

    The domestic pig descends from the wild boar. Domesticated around 7000 BC in the Near East and East Asia, it currently accounts for over 36% of the world’s meat intake. Each year in the United States alone, the average person consumes about fifty pounds of… Read more

  • Caviar: The black gold of the Black Sea

    Caviar, goose liver, and truffle are the three top delicacies consumed in the world. Caviar is probably the most delicious. It is made from the unfertilized eggs of the sturgeon, of which there are twenty-eight fish species belonging to the family Acipenseridae, and is often… Read more

  • Sunao Tawara

    Sunao Tawara was a prominent Japanese pathologist and anatomist best known for discovering in 1906 the atrioventricular node, also known as the AV node or bundle of Tawara. This small mass of specialized cardiac muscle fibers located between the atria and ventricles of the heart… Read more