Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: appendectomy

  • Claudius Amyand (c. 1680–1740) of the first appendectomy

    On the southwest corner of London’s Hyde Park once stood St. George’s Hospital, now relocated to the suburbs. It had been founded in 1733 by a group of surgeons who moved there from the Westminster Hospital. Among them was a surgeon whose Huguenot parents had fled from France after the revocation of the Edict of…

  • Harvey Cushing: Surgeon, Author, Soldier, Historian 1869-1939

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States Harvey Cushing was a third-generation physician, born to a family of New England Puritans who had migrated to Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid 1830s. His father and grandfather were successful physicians; family members on both sides were well-educated and financially secure. At Yale, Cushing studied Latin, Greek, literature, and…

  • The early days in the history of appendectomy

    Damiano RondelliChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction What we define as appendicitis today is a relatively recent clinical picture that was well-described only in the 19th century. This is in part due to the difficult anatomic identification of the appendix. Although scholars believed to find possible descriptions of the appendix in the work of Hippocrates, strong…