Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Thomas Addison

  • The Royal Society of Medicine of London: A brief history

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The origins of the Royal Society of Medicine in London can be traced back to 1805. It was in that year that a breakaway group of learned physicians and surgeons formed a new medical society, the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. They met first in Gray’s Inn, the legal area…

  • John Bostock and hay fever

    JMS PearceHull, England Before the 1800s, hay fever, now estimated as affecting 5–10% of Western populations, was not widely recognized by physicians. James MacCulloch MD FRS, a doctor and geologist, in 1828 was the first to use the term hay fever, which he said was “a well-known disorder.”1 The surgeon William Gordon used the term…

  • Sir John Pringle, public health and military medicine pioneer

    At the end of the eighteenth century, Scottish doctors were more popular with patients than English ones because “their useful knowledge contrasted with the ornamental learning of English physicians who were Anglican or Oxbridge trained.”1 By 1825 almost 70% of all fellows and licentiates of the Royal College of Physicians were Scottish educated, including Richard…

  • A brief history of kidney transplantation

    Laura Carreras-PlanellaMarcella FranquesaRicardo LauzuricaFrancesc E. BorràsBarcelona, Spain We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated to 1550 BC and discovered…

  • Ernest Henry Starling and the birth of English Physiology

    JMS Pearce Hull, England 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 development of physiology whose prolific contributions made him one of the foremost scientists of his time. He was born on 17 April 1866 at 2 Barnsbury Square,…