Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Tuberculosis

  • Simon Flexner, infectious diseases pioneer

    Simon Flexner. circa 1930s. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Source, Infectious diseases shaped the life of Simon Flexner, who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful and prominent scientists in American medicine. His contributions to the field of infectious diseases were legion. He became the first chairman of pathology at…

  • Girolamo Cardano: Renaissance physician and polymath

    Born at Pavia in the duchy of Lombardy in 1501, Girolamo Cardano practiced medicine for fifty years but is remembered chiefly as a polymath. He composed 200 works, made important contributions to mathematics and algebra, invented several mechanical devices (some still in use today), and published extensive philosophical tracts and commentaries on the ancient philosophers…

  • Novalis: The white plague and the blue flower

    Nicolas Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Bust of Novalis at Nikolaifriedhof (Weiβenfels). Photo by Doris Antony on Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-2.5. Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr1 von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of early German Romanticism. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name “Novalis” from his twelfth-century…

  • Doctor Johnson and his ailments

    Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. c. 1770. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales. Public domain. Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest English literary figures of all time, is remembered more for what he said than for what he wrote. Other writers may have been more successful or more profound, but none had as great…

  • Robert Louis Stevenson and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, USA   Fig. 1: Edward Joseph F. Timmons, Stevenson House, ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Collection of the Union League Club Chicago. Famed Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) traveled to Monterey, California, in 1879 and lived for three months on the second floor of a white adobe boarding house called…

  • Ladies in red: Medical and metaphorical reflections on La Traviata

    Milad Matta Gregory Rutecki Lyndhurst, Ohio, United States Illustration by Jason Malmberg. “. . . phthisic beauty[’s] . . . most famous operatic embodiment was Violetta Valery . . .This physical type became not only fashionable but sexy . . . When a society does not understand—and cannot control—a disease, ground seems to open up…

  • How conflict and bureaucracy delayed the elimination of yellow fever

    Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode Island, United States   Army Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg. US government photo. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. The Golden Age of Bacteriology (1876–1906) saw the emergence of techniques to cultivate bacterial pathogens and develop vaccines and anti-toxin therapies against them. The new bacteriologists rapidly identified the agents causing anthrax, gonorrhea, typhoid,…

  • Health, wellness, and their determinants

    Travis Kirkwood Ottawa, Ontario, Canada   Original map made by John Snow in 1854. Cholera cases are highlighted in black. 2nd Ed by John Snow. Public Domain due to age. John Snow is often referred to as the father of modern epidemiology. His work is certainly worthy of this1 and present-day public health2 still strives toward…

  • What did Dorothy Reed See?

    Sara NassarCairo, Egypt “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”1– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall opened the doors of medicine at a time when women were considered incapable of managing this “gory” field. Although Reed’s eponymous Reed-Sternberg cell was a pivotal discovery for the…

  • “The Sick Child” in Scandinavian art

    Göran WettrellSweden Within Western figurative pictorial art there has long been an interest in showing sick children, their psychological attitudes, the effects on the family, and indeed the very reality of disease. One of the best known works on  this subject is by Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) of the Dutch Golden Age of painting. Titled The…