Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: United Kingdom

  • Book review: “All manner of ingenuity and industry”: a bio-bibliography of Dr. Thomas Willis 1621–1675

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of “All manner of ingenuity and industry” by Alastair Compston. Thomas Willis, born four hundred years ago, is still known by students of neuroanatomy today for the eponymous Circle of Willis. Yet most doctors do not know the story of Willis, the seventeenth-century British physician and his…

  • A look back at insulin

    Shrestha Saraf Sutton Coldfield, United Kingdom Sanjay Saraf Sudarshan Ramachandran Birmingham, United Kingdom   Sir Frederick Banting and Dr. Charles Best co-discoverers of Insulin. Library and Archives Canada. Via Wikimedia. As we approach the centenary of the isolation, purification, and clinical use of insulin, it is an appropriate moment to reflect on the impact of…

  • Painting an ICU

    Mark Tan Northwest Deanery, England, United Kingdom   Claude Monet’s Japanese Bridge and Water Lilies from 1899. Princeton University Art Museum. Wikipedia. “[Monet was] only an eye – yet what an eye.” — Paul Cézanne   Much has been written about Claude Monet’s ophthalmic pathology.1-4 However, attributing his stylistic development to cataracts alone seems an…

  • A walk on the pediatric floor

    Elie Najjar St. Nottingham, United Kingdom   Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash I came to the pediatric floor to learn about medicine—the presentation, development, and resolution of diseases—but I found myself learning something that etched itself deeper into my soul. I learned about humanity and the great energy that even in the darkest…

  • Bristol Children’s Hospital and esophageal atresia

    Richard Spicer Bristol, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Bristol Children’s Hospital 1885-2001. Photo by the author. Bristol Children’s Hospital The Children’s Hospital in Bristol began as the Free Institution for Diseases of Women and Children in 1857. In 1885 it moved to a purpose-built neo-Gothic building (Fig.1) and continued to treat women and children on…

  • William Sands Cox—surgeon and founder of the Birmingham Medical School

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Drawing of William Sands Cox by T H Mcguire. 1854. Public domain. Via Wikimedia  In the early nineteenth century Birmingham was the second largest city in England. It was an industrial powerhouse, known as the city of a thousand trades, but it did not have its own medical…

  • The Girl with a Pearl Earring—A vanitas?

    James Lindesay Leicester, United Kingdom   Girl with a Pearl Earring. Johannes Vermeer. circa 1665. Mauritshuis. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. It is a truism that you only have one opportunity to see a picture for the first time. However, in our image-saturated age, by the time you get to see a famous painting in…

  • Review of Fracture: Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of Fracture: Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma by Matthew Parris, 2020. The lives of people who seem to be endowed with extraordinary abilities have long been a source of fascination. The famous Italian physician, researcher, and founder of the science of criminology, Cesare…

  • Book review: Architects of Structural Biology

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Cover of Architects of Structural Biology by John Meurig Thomas. Modern twenty-first-century high-technology medicine, which we now take for granted, was only made possible by remarkable advances in the physical and biological sciences of the twentieth century. In Architects of Structural Biology, the contributions of four scientific giants…

  • The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the legacy of Long John Silver

    George Venters Scotland   The “Old Surgical Hospital” as it is today. Courtesy of Dr. Iain MacIntyre. Faced with the danger of having his right foot amputated in 1873, the real “Long John Silver,” the English poet William E. Henley, turned for help to Joseph Lister and became a patient in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.…