Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Annette Tuffs

  • The journey into the blue

    Annette Tuffs Heidelberg, Germany   Alfred Doblin. Copyright S. Fischer Verlag “And when I came back – I did not return. You are never the same person you were, when you left.” Thus wrote Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) in 1946, in the newspaper Badische Zeitung in Freiburg,1 a few months after ending his forced absence of…

  • The morbid poet: Gottfried Benn, the morgue and the mysterious postcard

    Annette Tuffs Heidelberg, Germany   “Worst of all: not to die in summer, when everything is bright and the earth is easy on the spade.” So wrote the German poet Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), three years before his death, in the poem “What’s Bad”.1 But if the wrong timing of one’s death is the very worst…

  • The “Samariterhaus” Hospital and the “Institute for Experimental Cancer Research” in Heidelberg

    Annette Tuffs Heidelberg, Germany   Dedicated to another great German Cancer Surgeon, J.R. Siewert, who has introduced me to the legacy of Vinzenz Czerny  “Samariterhaus” Hospital On the 25th of September 1906, a large crowd of Heidelberg citizens expectantly lined the town boulevard to the university’s Great Hall, waiting to cheer on the Grand Duke Friedrich of…

  • The Endell Street Military Hospital

    Anne Cooper Stanmore, Australia   An Operation at the Military Hospital, Endell Street – Dr L Garrett, Dr Flora Murray, Dr W Buckley Francis Dodd, 1920. Imperial War Museum, London In 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany, the women of Britain were still being denied the vote. The parliament, headed by liberal Prime Minister…