Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Baghdad

  • Alfred Skirrow Robinson: The colorful life of a Roaring Twenties surgeon

    Stephen MartinDurham, UK & Thailand In 1926 my grandfather started work for Dr. A.S. Robinson in Redcar, a small town on the Yorkshire coast. The doctor needed a driver—at least that was the plan at first. He sent him for a fortnight to the Rolls Royce School of Motoring at Hendon, on the old Handley-Page…

  • From Baghdad to Chicago by Asad A. Bakir

    The title of Dr. Bakir’s erudite and engaging book brings to mind another book with a similar title. It is From Bagdad to Stambul (1892), one of the series of adventures that places its heroes in the city where Dr. Bakir was born almost exactly half a century later. The author of these stories was…

  • Certifying clinical competence: principles from the caliphate of al-Muqtadir

    Faraze NiaziJack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States “The devil is always in the details.”“Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”—Two Old Wise Sayings Certifying clinical competence has virtually universal support. After all, who does not want their doctor to be competent? Moreover, how many physicians feel that they are incompetent? Despite…

  • The first general hospital of Baghdad

    Hussain Al-SardarEngland, United Kingdom In 1872, Midhat Pasha, the governor of Baghdad, noticed the high prevalence of disease among the city’s population as well as the abuse of patients by conjurers, quibblers, and equivocators. He built the first hospital in the city on the Al Kargh side of the river Tigris, which divides the capital…