Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Harvard

  • 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.…

  • Moral judgment in medicine: “Sensibility of heart”

    Jack CoulehanStony Brook, New York, United States I want to reflect on the role of emotions, or “sensibility of heart,” in medical judgment. I take the term “judgment,” in general, to refer to the human capacity of assessing, analyzing, and reaching a conclusion with regard to any point or course of action. Any specific conclusion…

  • Francis Henry Williams: the first American chest radiologist

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Francis Henry Williams was born in Massachusetts on July 15, 1852. His father was a professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Williams graduated in chemistry in 1873 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in medicine from Harvard in 1877.1 He followed this with two years of training in…

  • Derek Ernest Denny-Brown

    JMS PearceHull, England Amongst the titans of medicine, it is not easy to pick out those whose footprints will not fade with passing time. Derek Denny-Brown (Fig 1) was one. He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. After his graduation in medicine from Otago University in 1924, he won a Beit fellowship to study in…

  • Harvey Cushing: Surgeon, Author, Soldier, Historian 1869-1939

    John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States Harvey Cushing was a third-generation physician, born to a family of New England Puritans who had migrated to Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid 1830s. His father and grandfather were successful physicians; family members on both sides were well-educated and financially secure. At Yale, Cushing studied Latin, Greek, literature, and…

  • A history of blood transfusion: A confluence of science—in peace, in war, and in the laboratory

    Kevin LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts The rudimentary lights provided only dim illumination of the operative field. The three British army surgeons worked feverishly to save the life of the young soldier, Corporal Smith, who had a significant liver injury. He had already lost a liter of blood during transport from the front. As the surgeons continued their…

  • Harvard medical school and the body snatchers

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, USA   Figure 1: Woodcut illustration from Fasciculus medicinae (1491) depicting a Lector, Ostensor, and Sector during a dissection Their silhouettes surely would have been seen against the backdrop of a moonlit night in 1796 as they entered the North Burying Ground in Boston. Their hearts were likely filled with…

  • Joseph Warren: The forgotten founder

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States “If Warren had lived, Washington would have remained an obscurity.”– Peter Oliver, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court On June 17, a late spring New England morning, thousands of Bostonians will begin their day by traveling over the Zakim Bridge. Few will be aware of the significance…

  • The Massachusetts General Hospital

    Andy HungChicago, Illinois, United States The performance was about to begin. The great glass dome lit up the open center stage with bright skylight. It was October 16, 1846, a time in history when surgeons performed their art before spectators, and the audience was about to witness a historic performance. William Morton, a 25-year-old dentist,…

  • Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man

    Philip R. Liebson In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is no known…