Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Enrique Chaves-Carballo

  • Dingler’s Panama tragedy

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoKansas City, Kansas, United States According to David McCullough, author of best-seller The Path Between the Seas, Jules Isidore Dingler “was not impressive-looking…he was short and bald…had small round shoulders, a soft, round face, soft blue eyes, and a drooping, mahogany-colored mustache….The appearance suggested neither initiative nor resolution and the appearance [sic] was deceiving.”1…

  • Palo Seco: A leper colony in Panama

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland Park, Kansas The history of leprosy goes back to antiquity and is replete with unscientific prejudices, including the belief that the disease was highly contagious. Therefore, lepers were ostracized from society. It was not until the nineteenth century that Armauer Hansen (1841–1912), a Norwegian physician versed in histopathology, published in 1874 his findings…

  • Gonzalo R. Lafora: Spanish neuropsychologist and neuropathologist

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland, Kansas, United States Gonzalo Rodríguez-Lafora (1886–1971) was a Spanish neurologist best known for his description of intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies (Lafora bodies) in myoclonic epilepsy. Lafora was born in Madrid on June 25, 1886. At the age of four, he moved to Puerto Rico when his father became a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish…

  • Death, disease, and discrimination during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904–1914)

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland Park, Kansas, United States Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1858–1919) President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned an interoceanic canal as indispensable for American “dominance at the seas.”1 An isthmian canal would facilitate rapid deployment of U.S. Navy ships from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans, bypassing the arduous 2,000-mile trip around the tip of South America. However, construction of…

  • The germ of laziness

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas, United States   Charles Wardell Stiles (1867-1941). Parasitologist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Portrait ca. 1912. Wikimedia Commons Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation was chartered on June 1909 “to promote the well-being and to advance the civilization of the peoples of the United States and its territories and possessions and of…

  • Abram Belskie: Sculptor of medical medallions

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoKansas City, Kansas, United States Abram Belskie was born in London on March 27, 1907. He studied painting and sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art and received a scholarship to further his studies in Europe. In 1929 he moved to New York City, where he assisted sculptor John Gregory for three years in…

  • Origin of yellow fever

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States The origin of yellow fever has been a controversial subject since the disease appeared in the New World. William C. Gorgas, who was responsible for the sanitation of Cuba and Panama, believed that yellow fever originated in Panama.1 Henry R. Carter, from the U.S. Marine Hospital Service and director…

  • Carlos J. Finlay: The mosquito man

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States Portrait Dr. Carlos J. Finlay. From Images History of Medicine (IHM), National Library of Medicine. Carlos Juan Finlay was born in Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey), Cuba, on December 3, 1833. He was sent to Europe to complete his secondary education but was forced to return to Cuba after…