Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Social Science

  • The truth about the Mad Hatter

    Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland Few works of fiction are as original as Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Replete with singular characters such as the White Rabbit, the King and Queen of Hearts, the March Hare, the somnolent Dormouse, and the infamous grinning Cheshire Cat,… Read more

  • Morphine in the life and works of Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol (1861–1931)

    Vicent RodillaValencia, Spain Morphine was discovered by the German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner, who in 1804 isolated it from opium and named it “morphium” after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. He noted that high doses could lead to psychiatric effects and that the pain… Read more

  • Headlessness and sensibility

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States April 15, 2019, was an ill-starred day. Parisians watched with horror as huge flames broke through the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in a conflagration that threatened to reduce that precious jewel of gothic architecture to a heap of smoking… Read more

  • Women in medicine

    Women have long faced discrimination, prejudice, and exclusion from formal medical training, despite having served as healers and midwives since antiquity. In ancient Egypt, Merit Ptah was recognized as the first known woman physician in about 2700 BCE. In Greece, owing to societal restrictions, women… Read more

  • Diana Beck, neurosurgery pioneer

    Born in Chester, England, in 1902, Diana Beck attended the University of Oxford and studied medicine at the School of Medicine for Women (later renamed the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine). She graduated in 1925, and, after working as a surgical registrar, took her… Read more

  • Lucius Cornelius Sulla in health and disease (138–78 BCE)

    The transition from democracy to dictatorship and tyranny is never pleasant to behold. Whatever its causes, whatever defects it sets out to remedy, it more often than not leads to blood being spilt and tears being shed. This is exemplified by the story of Cornelius… Read more

  • The Cumberbatch story

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Benedict Cumberbatch is a well-known English actor whose name appears often in the media as Dr. Stephen Strange (an arrogant and self-centered neurosurgeon) or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson. Recently, we heard that the Barbados National Task Force… Read more

  • Epithets, solecisms, and Oslerian hagiography

    Patrick FiddesMelbourne, Australia To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certainIdeals—this alone is worth the struggle.1 On February 22, 1905, Sir William Osler delivered his final address at Johns Hopkins University, in which he said, “I desire no other… Read more

  • The wild Wolf and neurosyphilis

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Von den Bergen sacht hernieder,Weckend die uralten Lieder,Steigt die wunderbare Nacht,Und die Gründe glänzen wieder,Wie du’s oft im Traum gedacht. Gently down from the mountains,Waking the ancient songs,Rises the wonderful night,And the grounds shine again,As you often thought in your dreams. —“Nachtzauber”,… Read more

  • Shingles

    JMS PearceHull, England The physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the second century AD described a painful skin eruption that typically followed a band-like or “girdle-like” pattern, which corresponds to the dermatomal pattern of shingles.1 The Greek word herpein means “to creep,” and zoster (Latin cingulum)… Read more

  • Book review: Florence Nightingale’s Rivals: Nursing Through the Crimea

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Florence Nightingale is best remembered as the founder of modern nursing. She opened her famous nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, in 1860. Her principles of nurse training were based on her experiences in the Crimean War a few years… Read more

  • The mystery of the hoofbeats

    Edward TaborBethesda, Maryland, United States All physicians get phone calls from time to time from friends asking for medical advice. I received one of these calls from a pharmacologist I knew. A few weeks prior, his wife had begun having memory loss and difficulty walking.… Read more