Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: scientist

  • Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy and medicine

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Novum Organum Scientiarum, 2nd edition, 1645. EC.B1328.620ib, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced. – Alexander Pope, 1741   The early seventeenth century was a time when natural philosophy, the precursor of modern…

  • Thomas Young MD FRS (1773-1829): “The Last Man Who Knew Everything.”

    JMS Pearce East Yorks, UK   Fig 1. Thomas Young. Mezzotint by G. R. Ward, 1855, after Sir T. Lawrence. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) It is impossible to place precisely Thomas Young (Fig 1) into any professional class. He was both physician and scientist, renowned for an astonishing range of…

  • Ernest Henry Starling and the birth of English Physiology

    JMS Pearce  Hull, England   Fig 1. Ernest Starling. Univ. College. Graduate Guy Hospital. 1890. London. (From Images from the History of Medicine (NLM) ). Accessed via Wikimedia Science has only one language, quantity, and only one argument, the experiment -EH Starling   Ernest Henry Starling (1866-1927) (Fig 1) was an outstanding figure in the…

  • Jöns Jacob Berzelius: physician, scientist, and globetrotter

    Frank Wollheim Sweden   Figure 1. Berzelius around 1807 Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) was not only the enigmatic Swedish chemist of his time but also an accomplished medical doctor, active humanitarian, co-founder of the Karolinska Institute, and secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for thirty years. He also mastered the pen, leaving 7000…