Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Science

  • Fred Gey, father of the antioxidant hypothesis

    Alun EvansBelfast, United Kingdom Fred Gey was a German scientist who developed the concept that antioxidant vitamin deficiency caused certain diseases. He qualified as an MD at the University of Basel in 1952, having first researched clinical biochemistry. He then spent two years in the biochemistry section of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany,…

  • Chemical origins of terrestrial biology

    David GreenChicago, Illinois, United States As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s, I attended a lecture by Harold C. Urey, a Nobel laureate. The subject of his lecture was the origin of life, and he described an experiment that he and his graduate student, Stanley Miller, had performed at the University…

  • Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and X-rays

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, England The name Röntgen will be familiar to most for his discovery of X-rays on November 8, 1895. This date is now celebrated as the International Day of Radiology. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born in Lennep, Germany on March 27, 1845. The house where he was born is now looked after…

  • Archibald Edward Garrod: Inborn errors of metabolism

    JMS PearceHull, England It is given to very few to invent a new class of diseases and to even fewer one that has survived subsequent scrutiny. Archibald Garrod, KCMG DM LLD FRCP FRS (1857–1936) (Fig 1), was born in London into an unusually talented family. He was the fourth son of Sir Alfred Baring Garrod,…

  • Entomological evidence and tales of the dead

    Srilakshmi ChidambaramManila, Philippines Picture the scene: A body, blue with bloat, sprawled across the floor. The skin is sloughed off and peeling; fat drips through the carpet. The room is warm with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. A living, seething mass of flesh-eating maggots swarms the body. Blowflies. Your boot touches a hardened pupa casing.…

  • The myth of knowledge

    Chloe LeeSingapore Legend has it that aeons ago on the Island of Colchis hung a magical Golden Fleece that could heal any disease. Modern medicine has proposed a new explanation for this incredible tale: Colchicum autumnale, a flowering plant now used to produce colchicine. Since Grecian antiquity, its therapeutic properties have been widely acknowledged, and…

  • Robert Hooke and Micrographia

    JMS PearceHull, England It is perhaps rash to attempt to appraise the work of Robert Hooke (1635–1703), but renewed attention is merited to a great scientist whose contribution to medicine and science has not been adequately acknowledged. Robert Hooke was a scientist and biologist who, at a time when science was young and not yet…

  • Keeping corpses company

    Nater AkpenMakurdi, Benue State, Nigeria Inspired by an error where he had misjudged the time since death—not by hours or days—by 112 years,1 William Bass set up the Anthropological Research Facility in Tennessee. His request to his dean was simple: Give me some land to put dead bodies on. His research facility, colloquially called the…

  • Fraudulent medical research and “zombie articles”

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”– Sturgeon’s law1“Garbage in, garbage out.” – Early computer-speak for “nonsense input produces nonsense output” The publishing of studies in medical journals is based on trust. When journal editors receive a manuscript, they first look at the title to determine if the subject may be appropriate for…

  • Christopher Wren’s contributions to medicine

    JMS PearceHull, England An extraordinary natural philosopher and Renaissance man, Christopher Wren (1632–1723) (Fig 1) was primarily an astronomer and architect.1 He is remembered mostly for his work after the Great Fire of London of 1666 as designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral, originally erected in AD 604. Wren laid the first stone at on Ludgate…