Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  • Rejuvenation: “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Ch’ io sono quell gran medicoDottore eanciclpedico,Chiamato Dulcamara,. . . Rigiovnir bramate? I’m noted as a scientist,Practitioner and specialist.I’m Doctor Dulcamara…Would you like your youth recaptured? L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), music by Geatano Donizetti, Libretto by Felice Romano, Act I, scene IV1 “Rejuvenation” through medical science is the…

  • Joseph Bell and Conan Doyle

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England “…The remarkable individuality and discriminating tact of my old master made a deep and lasting impression on me, though I had not the faintest idea that it would one day lead me to forsake medicine for story writing.” Arthur Conan Doyle is remembered worldwide as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The…

  • A 130-year-old medical cold case: Who was Jack the Ripper?

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, USA As murder followed murder and mutilated bodies were discovered and described in the press, one can imagine the fear that swept the hardscrabble Whitechapel section of London in 1888. Populated with many immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia, unemployment was rampant and tenements were found on most streets. It…

  • Through the Magic Door with Conan Doyle

    “Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books.” —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury You are invited, gentle reader, to walk through the magic door and step into the library. Smoking is allowed, says your host, as he invites you to sit on the green settee from “where you…

  • Joseph Bell, supreme diagnostician

    The professor produced a vial filled with a bitter amber-colored liquid and asked the medical students to dip a finger in it and taste it, so he could determine how many of them had developed their powers of observation. The students grimaced but did as they were told, and the professor likewise dipped his finger…