Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Famous Hospitals

  • Antezana Hospital, Spain

    Mojca RamšakLjubljana, Slovenia In the center of the Spanish city of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, stands an exceptional institution—the Antezana Hospital, officially Hospital de Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia. It is one of the oldest continuously operating hospitals in Western Europe, having functioned for more than five centuries. Today, it houses a nursing home…

  • Rome’s Ospedale Santo Spirito: From ruin to revival

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Renowned for his restoration of the legendary Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, Pope Sixtus IV (Francesco della Rovere; 1414–1484) embellished Rome with such rapidity and magnitude that he earned the title Urbis Restaurator. Some lauded him as the new Augustus of the Eternal City and praised him for surpassing his…

  • The great hospitals of Paris

    Few cities have shaped Western civilization as profoundly as Paris, the “city of light”. For over 500 years, until the mid-twentieth century, Paris was the undisputed center of European culture, encompassing art, literature, and philosophy. Historians trace its early history to 451 CE, when Saint Genevieve saved it from the Huns, and to about 500…

  • Thomas Guy and his statue

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Thomas Guy was probably the greatest charitable benefactor in eighteenth-century Britain. At his death, he had amassed a fortune of over two hundred thousand pounds (worth around 500 million pounds in today’s money). His largesse was directed primarily at Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, London. As a governor of St Thomas’s Hospital,…

  • What’s in a name?

    Aaroh DubeyLondon, England “What’s in a name?” Juliet asks the audience in Act 2 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet. The play laments the folly of holding onto the past and giving undue meaning to names and titles.1 Outside of Shakespeare, however, things are rarely as black and white: names are important, the past shapes…

  • Great Ormond Street and JM Barrie

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden James Matthew Barrie (1860–1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He wrote about thirty novels and twenty plays. He is best known for his 1904 play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, which later became the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy. When Barrie was six years old, his brother…

  • Long before Pearl Harbor, an entire hospital was sent to help England in World War II

    Edward TaborBethesda, MD, United States Harvard University President James B. Conant had the idea of sending a fully staffed hospital to England to help the British in their war with Germany in 1939, more than two years before the US entered the war. It became a collaboration between Harvard University and the American Red Cross.…

  • Guadalupe: One of Spain’s oldest schools of medicine

    Nicolás Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Guadalupe, a small Spanish town in the district of Cáceres, Extremadura, arose around a monastery. Legend says that a shepherd named Gil Cordero was looking for a stray sheep when the Virgin Mary appeared to him. When the shepherd told of this apparition, the clergymen of Cáceres went to the place…

  • St. Godric and the lost leper hospital of Darlington

    Stephen MartinUK In the late 1100s, the English monk Reginald of Durham wrote an account in Latin of the hermit St. Godric, whom he knew personally.1 Reginald attributed over two hundred healing miracles to him, with detailed descriptions including the patient’s name and origin.2 Reginald’s book deserves to be better known as a rich catalogue…

  • The medieval hospitals of County Durham

    Stephen MartinCounty Durham, UK County Durham in the northeast of England is rich in the atmospheric remains and documented history of medieval hospitals, all connected with the church. Looking at the whole group has some interesting new lessons. Durham Cathedral Durham City’s Benedictine Priory, later the Cathedral, ran two infirmaries.1 One, for “lay folk,”2 with…