Tag Archives: Henry Dunant

A tale of two cities

Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel   Henry Dunant. Via Wikimedia.  I wish that when I visited the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland years ago, I had also seen the German island of Reichenau and the Swiss village of Heiden 104 km to the south. Both are on Lake Constance, which the Germans call Bodensee […]

First principles

Charles G. Kels San Antonio, Texas, United States   Ambulance Corps. Method of removing wounded from the field depicts the aftermath of battle in the American Civil War. The law of war is enshrined in treaties but steeped in blood. In 1859, a young Swiss businessman was traveling through Italy when a savage battle between […]

Humanitarian for all: The life of Henry Dunant

Stephen Kosnar Lima, Peru   Henry Dunant 1855. ICRC on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. In his late thirties and bankrupt, Henry Dunant lived in abject poverty, on occasion being forced to eat bread crusts and sleep outdoors in Paris. It is a bitter slice of one man’s history, particularly given that only a few years […]

The Red Cross and hematology pioneers

Barnabas Pastory Dar es Salaam, Tanzania   The Red Cross and the Red Crescent emblems at the museum in Geneva. Photo by Julius.kusuma on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Providing medical care to suffering humankind constitutes an important part of the Red Cross’ service scope. History records an important connection between the Red Cross and pioneers […]