Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: thomas hodgkin

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Thomas Hodgkin: the limits of idealism

    Kirtan NautiyalHouston, Texas, United States Thomas Hodgkin was born in 1798 into a middle class Quaker family then residing in Pentonville, a village north of London. His father was a private tutor and Hodgkin’s early education was also conducted at home, balancing instruction in the Quaker tenets of simplicity and social justice with a wider…