Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Bellevue Hospital

  • The death of James Abram Garfield

    Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States The medical treatment of some US presidents and ex-presidents has been controversial. One example is George Washington, who in 1799 at age sixty-seven suffered from an acute throat ailment that was treated by his physicians with molasses, vinegar, and butter gargles; inhaled vinegar and hot water; and a throat salve…

  • Baruch Blumberg who discovered the hepatitis B virus

    Baruch Samuel Blumberg, like Barack Obama, was called Barry by his friends. In 1976 he received the Nobel Prize for saving millions of lives by discovering the cause of hepatitis B, a plague that had afflicted mankind since time immemorial. Born in Brooklyn in 1925, he came from a family that had emigrated to the…

  • A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international scientific cooperation seems to be the order of the day, it is heartening to recall that during the height of Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States, collaboration between an American virologist and his Russian counterparts…

  • A teacher remembered

    Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut While a student in medical school during the early 1950s, I was assigned by chance to the medical service of Dr. Ludwig Eichna at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital (Figure 1). A professor of medicine and a respected cardiologist, clinical investigator, and medical educator, Dr. Eichna was serious, reserved, quiet in demeanor,…

  • Cournand and Richards: Pioneers in cardiopulmonary physiology

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States During World War I among the allied forces were an artillery lieutenant just out of college and a medical student who acted as an auxiliary battle surgeon because of the high mortality among battalion surgeons. They were, respectively, Dickinson W. Richards, Jr. (1895—1973) and Andre Cournand (1895—1988). Eventually they…

  • Lewis Atterbury Conner: Cofounder of the American Heart Association

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Lewis Atterbury Conner (1867–1950) was the chief of the New York Hospital medical service. He made rounds with the medical staff even on Sundays, when he would come from church wearing a morning coat, wing collar, and striped trousers. Unfortunately, he was very hard of hearing, yet this…