Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: xanthopsia

  • The other Charles Darwin (1758–1778)

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom “’Precursoritis’ is the bane of historiography.”– Stephen Jay Gould One of the best-known and important discoveries in the practice of medicine was the introduction of digitalis by William Withering (Fig 1). It was the subject of controversy that involved the Darwin family. For almost two hundred years digitalis was the…

  • Monet and his cataracts

    Peter KopplinToronto, Ontario, Canada In January 1923, the elderly artist Claude Monet struggled restlessly in his room after his cataract surgery. He got up and tore at his bandages.1 His family put it down to his temperament. But an elderly man in his eighties, immobilized, recovering from surgery with limited sight in the left eye…