Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: hepatitis B

  • The wonderful world of vaccines

    Jayant Radhakrishnan Chicago, Illinois, United States   A patient with his whole body covered with smallpox lesions. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, photo by Barbara Rice. Epidemics and pandemics became an issue about 10,000 years ago when hunters and gatherers became farmers and began to live in communities. Smallpox was one of the first…

  • Baruch Blumberg who discovered the hepatitis B virus

    Baruch Samuel Blumberg, like Barack Obama, was called Barry by his friends. In 1976 he received the Nobel Prize for saving millions of lives by discovering the cause of hepatitis B, a plague that had afflicted mankind since time immemorial. Born in Brooklyn in 1925, he came from a family that had emigrated to the…

  • The Korean soldier

    Charles Halsted Davis, California, United States   Korean War, train attack. 1950. US Army Military History Institute. Public Domain. A fifty-five-year-old Korean man arrived at the emergency room of our teaching hospital after suddenly vomiting blood during the night. Called next morning to consult in our intensive care unit, I reviewed his chart and pulled…

  • Medical and scientific innovations arising from warfare

    Brian OmondiNairobi, Kenya Perhaps the only bright side of war is that it impels nations to make medical and scientific innovations. War has long been portrayed as being the best school for surgeons and even for doctors.1 An association between medical services and the military can be traced back to ancient Greece, and the link has…