Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Fort Meyers

  • The navel of the world: Belly buttons, innies and outies

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States In 1999, I traveled from Panama to Easter Island, via the Galapagos, as a passenger/deckhand/ship’s surgeon on an old square-rigged sailing ship. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s history and description of the island had captured my imagination. Easter Island, the most remote, isolated place on earth, was originally settled…

  • The surgery of pyloric stenosis in Chicago

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States Harald Hirschprung, a Danish pediatrician, in 1888 described the clinical course and pathology of two infants who died with congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis.1 Gastroenterostomy was adopted for the treatment of infants with pyloric stenosis, but surgical treatments were hampered by delayed diagnosis, malnutrition, and a lack of knowledge about…