Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: spleen

  • Baudelaire’s spleen

    Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très-vieux,Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,S’ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d’autres bêtes.Rien ne peut l’égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. I am like the king of a rainy country, richbut…

  • On the way to school

    Mary JumbelicSyracuse, New York, United States A thin line of blood oozed from a shallow cut in the skin, like the first stroke of an artist’s brush on a blank canvas. The second and third incisions intersected the first to form a large Y-shape. Sanguinous fluid beaded up along their lengths. As the scalpel penetrated…

  • The proximity of death

    Paul C. RosenblattSt. Paul, Minnesota, United States In September 1951, I was a very sick twelve-year-old, covered with bruises and red dots where blood vessels were leaking. My nose had been bleeding for days and nothing we did stopped it. My blood was not clotting. The morning my mother took me to the University Hospital…

  • The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore

    Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States In 1832, a paper entitled On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen was read to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London by its secretary, as Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) was not yet a member. In it, Hodgkin described the clinical histories and gross postmortem findings of seven…

  • Phillipe Gaucher (1854-1918)

    In the days when syphilis was rampant in Europe and diagnostic modalities few, many unrelated medical conditions were erroneously attributed to it. There was, for example, the distinguished professor of syphilology and dermatology at the Hôpital Saint-Antoine and the University of Paris, who “aggressively promoted” the idea that poliomyelitis and appendicitis were due to syphilis.…

  • From enigma to Jeremy

    Ami Schattner Jerusalem, Israel One day each week I leave my hospital to serve as a consultant in ambulatory internal medicine. General practitioners from the area refer difficult patients to me, and thus my encounters vary from the very simple to the most challenging diagnostic riddles. Rachel belonged to the latter. This elderly lively lady…

  • Spherocytosis

    Andrea LolloNew York, New York, United States “Hereditary spherocytosis is a common inherited disorder that is characterised by anaemia, jaundice, and splenomegaly.”1 It was odd, of course, for a ten-year-old to have gallstones. It was even stranger for me to miss a full week of summer camp to sleep on the couch, swimming in and…