Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Stefan Zweig

  • Did Louis XVI have phimosis?

    Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States On May 16, 1770, Louis Auguste, the Dauphin of France and the future Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette, an Austrian archduchess.1 For the next eight years, the poorly matched couple failed to produce an heir, creating yet another source of political instability in France. It was not until December 19,…

  • How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny

    JMS PearceHull, England In March 1933 while visiting Vienna, William Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics, learned that Hitler had just decreed it illegal for “non-Aryan,” mostly Jewish people to hold posts in the Civil Service. Many lawyers, doctors, and academics were deemed “undesirable” and dismissed instantly. Nazi concentration camps, mass desecration, medical…

  • Matushka’s ordeal

    Sarah IrawaParañaque City, Philippines Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette’s biographer, wrote of his heroine as “the most signal example in history in which destiny will at times pluck a human being from obscurity and, with commanding hand, force the man or woman in question to overstep the bounds of mediocrity.” The same could be said of…