Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Bubonic Plague

  • Hybridity in Hong Kong: The Tung Wah Hospital

    Angharad FletcherHong Kong, China In his 1895 government report on the recent outbreak of bubonic plague, Dr Philip Bernard Chenery Ayres, last Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong, berated the Tung Wah Hospital for its dangerous and insanitary conditions. Ayres listed the many “medical and surgical atrocities” he had witnessed within the walls of this “menace…

  • Plague Sydney 1900

    Barry R. CatchloveSydney Introduction Bubonic plague has been the most feared disease throughout history. Most people are aware of its ravages but see it as a pestilence of the middle ages. Few are aware that it remains a disease of the twenty-first century, is endemic in many parts of the developed and underdeveloped world, and…

  • Doctors and illness in Boccaccio’s Decameron

    Maria SgouridouGreece Introduction Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Tuscany in 1313, the illegitimate son of a merchant of Certaldo, who launched him on a commercial career hoping he would follow in his steps. Sent to Naples for that reason, he soon abandoned commerce and the study of canon law, and began instead to write stories…