Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Annabelle S. Slingerland

  • Ferdinand Sauerbruch, father of thoracic surgery

    Annabelle SlingerlandLeon LacquetLeiden, the Netherlands Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951) was one of the most important thoracic surgeons of the first half of the twentieth century, remembered for pioneering a method that would allow access to the thoracic cavity and the heart. Three years after his death in 1954, his life was detailed in a movie authored…

  • The Beetham Eye Institute at the Joslin Diabetes Center

    Annabelle S. SlingerlandBoston, Massachusetts, United States 108 Bay State Road Spanning over three generations of leading ophthalmologists, the Beetham Eye Institute has contributed to major breakthroughs in diabetes eye care, from the first location of Dr. William P. Beetham’s ophthalmology practice at 108 Bay State Road in Boston to its current role as the ophthalmology…

  • Scutari Crimean War Hospital

    Annabelle SlingerlandRobin SeeleyThe Netherlands While hospitals are often idealized as peaceful places, Scutari Hospital shatters all such dreams. It became notorious for bare battlefields, turbulent turmoil, traumatized soldiers, officers, governments. But its silver lining was nursing and scientific innovation that resulted in compassionate care with cutting edge technology. Just beyond Crimea, the Black Sea emerges,…

  • Ellis Island Hospital, from quarantine to freedom

    Annabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands The recent news and concerns about immigration into Europe and other parts of the world bring to mind similar events and fears prevailing in the years during which millions of people immigrated into the United States of America. During that period, under the benevolent gaze of the Statue of Liberty…

  • Westerbork Hospital—a blessing in disguise

    Annabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands This year Westerbork Hospital in the east of the Netherlands celebrates its seventieth anniversary, not of its birth but of its closure. Despite its well-deserved reputation for medical care, it was part of Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork, a Nazi concentration camp that held persons selected for transport to the death camps. The…

  • Craiglockhart Hospital, head above the parapet

    Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands You are in World War I, back in its notorious trenches, hearing uninterrupted shooting, deafened from the shells, smelling cordite and dead bodies, fellow soldiers fall back on you, wounded or dead, grey with mud. War neurosis, nervous breakdown, neurasthenia or “shellshock” follows you like your own shadow. How on earth can…

  • The song of diabetes

    Annabelle SlingerlandWouter JukemaThe Netherlands We would like to thank Dr. Robin Seeley and Rosemary McNally. Preface Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are now so routinely diagnosed and treated that we rarely consider their origins. However, this distinction did not officially exist until it first appeared in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) in 1965.…