Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Uppsala

  • “Phossy jaw”: an industrial horror story

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The greatest tragedy in the whole story of occupational diseases.”1– Donald Hunter, M.D. (1898–1978) The development of cheap, reliable, and reasonably safe matches became possible with the addition of white phosphorus (P4O10) to the match head mixture. The first factory to use white phosphorus (also called “yellow phosphorus”) in match manufacturing opened…

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer describes koro

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”– Isaac Bashevis Singer I. B. Singer (1903–1991) was born in Warsaw, Poland. He lived there and also in rural Poland during the First World War. In 1935 he immigrated…

  • The surgeon’s photograph of the Loch Ness monster

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Whatever is the truth, there is no denying that Nessie will continue to intrigue the world for years to come.”– Johnathan Bright, Oxford Internet Institute Loch Ness, at thirty-seven kilometers long and 230 meters deep at its deepest point, is the second largest lake in Scotland.1 Stories about a creature of great…

  • Book review: The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Facsimile of a wax teaching model made by Sergeant Thomas H. Kelsey for the New Zealand Medical Corps facial and jaw injury unit, c. 1917. British National Army Museum Copyright, released under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. “A chirurgien should have…the harte of a lyin…the eyes of a hawke…[and] the hands…

  • Diagnosing Mona Lisa

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.”– Noel Coward Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a many-talented genius of the Italian Renaissance. He was a painter, anatomist, engineer, and inventor. One of his best known paintings, a portrait of a noblewoman, is called the Mona…

  • Movie review: Première Année (The Freshmen)

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “Never memorize something you can look up.” – Albert Einstein “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill   Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash. Première Année (literally “First Year”) is a 2018 French film. In it, we meet and follow two young men in their first year of…

  • Dr. Désiré-Magloire Bourneville: a man ahead of his time

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Drawing of a children’s puzzle with different shaped pieces and holes. From Assistance, traitement et éducation des enfants idiots et dégénérés: rapport fait au Congrès National d’assistance publique (session de Lyon, juin 1894) by Bourneville (Paris: Aux bureaux du Progrès médical [etc.], 1895), p. 233. Francis A. Countway Library of…

  • A tale of three doctors

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Early print of an execution by guillotine, as proposed by Dr. Guillotin. Jean-François Janinet, c. 1789–1791. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris via Wikimedia. Public domain. “How true it is that it is difficult to benefit mankind without some unpleasantness resulting for oneself.” – Dr. Edme-Claude Bourru, giving Dr. Guillotin’s eulogy…

  • Going berserk

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Berserk: frenzied, furiously, or madly violent. – Oxford English Dictionary   Imaginative drawing of a berserker in a fur loincloth. From Den Skandinavska Nordens Historia (The Scandinavian North’s History) by Gustaf Henrik Mellin, published 1850. The British Library on Flickr via Norwegian Wikipedia. No known copyright restrictions. The word berserkr…

  • Berzelius, father of Swedish chemistry

      Jons Jakob Berzelius. Engraving by Charles W. Sharpe and published by William Mackenzie, 1860. After Johan Olaf Sodermark. Smithsonian Libraries Image Gallery via Wikimedia. Public domain. Born in 1779 in East Gotland in the southern part of Sweden, Jons Jacob Berzelius descended from an old Swedish family in which many of his ancestors had…