Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Gynecology

  • Heartbreak in the nursery

    Shruthi Ravishankar Chennai, India   Image description: Cherry red spot as seen in Tay Sachs disease. The center of the fovea appears bright red because it is surrounded by a milky halo. Photo by Jonathan Trobe, MD. 6 September 2011. Public Domain. Source I began the long drive to the pediatric hospital on a route peppered…

  • Howard Kelly’s avant-garde autopsy method

    Julius P. Bonello, George E. Tsourdinis Peoria, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Dr. Howard Kelly (Photo courtesy of The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions)3 Once dubbed the “Prince of Gynecology,” Dr. Howard A. Kelly was one of the most prominent surgeons in the United States in the early…

  • Origins of the Pap smear

    When Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou brought his wife to America in 1913 he had $250 in his pocket. Both had to take menial jobs, she as a seamstress, he as a rug salesman, violin player in a restaurant, and clerk at a Greek newspaper. A year later, he obtained a position as laboratory technician at Cornell…

  • Lessons learned from the Greeks: The physician-patient relationship in Hippocratic Gynecology

    Jenna NickasNew Brunswick, NJ, USA The medical treatment of women in Classical Greece was a topic not overlooked by the Hippocratic tradition. Much of the Corpus addresses the health of women, especially Epidemics and Diseases of Women. Within this genre two things are certain: all patients were female and all doctors were male. Many clinical…

  • Loyal Davis, legendary neurosurgeon (1896–1982)

    For more than thirty years, in an era less politically correct than ours, Dr. Loyal Davis reigned supreme as chief of surgery at the Northwestern University medical school in Chicago. He retired in 1963, but stories about him persisted as lively subjects of conversation and amusement, to be told with relish at meetings and dinner…

  • “Mississippi Appendectomy” and other stories: When silence is complicity

    Alida Rol Eugene, Oregon, United States  Patient on the Table, 2017. Watercolor by Alida Rol, private collection. The world moves fast and it would rather pass u by than 2 stop and c what makes u cry. – Tupac Shakur, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” She sits perched on the exam table in a too-large gown.…

  • Mary Poonen Lukose

    K.S. Mohindra Ottawa, Ontario, Canada   Dr. Mary Poonen Lukose In a country where the status of women has been less than impressive, the Indian physician Mary Poonen Lukose blazed fiercely forward in a field dominated by men. Specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, she demonstrated innovation, leadership, and effective organizing capacities, making significant contributions to…

  • Gynecology and obstetrics

    Matko MarusicCroatia This essay is reprinted from Medicine from Inside (Medicina iznutra) by Matko Marusic, 2006, and translated from Croatian into English by Dr. Mario Malicki. A mountain farmer’s voice reached me from the window of the student hall: “We cannot play on Saturday.” I could not believe it! I had arranged for a soccer…

  • Historical contraception: birth control before “the pill”

    Emily R. W. DavidsonChapel Hill, United States Since the advent of the birth control pill, birth control advocates claim that women’s control over their reproductive potential increased the proportion of women in the US workforce over the course of the 20th century (Fig 1). Long before the oral contraceptive pill’s emergence, however, women found ways…

  • The el-Lahun gynecological papyrus

    Chinmoy K. Bose Kolkata, India The Kahun Gynecological Papyrus (Twelfth Dynasty 1800 BC)1-3 is the oldest available medical record of Egyptian civilization, a three page document one meter long and about thirty-three cm wide that deals with gynecological diseases, fertility, pregnancy, and contraception. The name Amenemhet III was written in the right upper corner behind third…