Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: gonorrhea

  • The life of a trailblazer: Ogino Ginko, one of the first female doctors in Japan

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Ogino Ginko was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine. She lived a life full of struggles, achieved a flash of fame, and then quietly retreated into history. She advocated for the rights, safety, and health of women and today should be remembered as an activist and role model to…

  • Albert C. Barnes, MD: the physician who spun silver into gold

    Sylvia KarasuNew York, New York, United States Albert C. Barnes is known as the man who accumulated an incomparable art collection for a foundation that bears his name. Few, though, may know how he earned a place in the history of medicine, specifically through his development of Argyrol, the unique compound that was the source…

  • How conflict and bureaucracy delayed the elimination of yellow fever

    Edward McSweeganKingston, Rhode Island, United States The Golden Age of Bacteriology (1876–1906) saw the emergence of techniques to cultivate bacterial pathogens and develop vaccines and anti-toxin therapies against them. The new bacteriologists rapidly identified the agents causing anthrax, gonorrhea, typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera, tetanus, diphtheria, plague, and other infectious diseases. One microbe that remained stubbornly elusive…

  • The forgotten many of the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiments

    Harsh PatoliaRoanoke, Virginia, United States In 2005, medical historian Dr. Susan Reverby foraged through boxes in the stuffy archives of the library of the University of Pittsburgh for the papers of Thomas Parran, the surgeon general who oversaw the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments of the mid-twentieth century. She had embarked on a quest to expose…

  • Louis XIV and his ailments

    Introduction For over 300 years King Louis XIV has occupied a special place in the heart of every Frenchman. He brought glory to his country, extended its boundaries, and promoted the arts and letters so that French culture became second to none in Europe. For many decades his neighbors trembled at the sound of his…

  • Doctor and dictionary

    For almost two decades beginning in 1882, Dr. William Chester Minor, retired army surgeon and captain of the Union Army during the American Civil War, labored unceasingly, day after day, reading and researching sixteenth and seventeenth century books, making notes on more than 12,000 slips of paper, and mailing them to the Scriptorium of Dr.…