Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hodgkin’s disease

  • The first effective chemotherapy for cancer

    Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   Caution: Chemotherapy. Photo by Justin Levy. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0   Sulfur mustard gas had no influence on the outcome of the battle at Ypres during World War I despite the many deaths and severe injuries it inflicted. Since then, chemical weapons have been used in…

  • The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore

    Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States   Obelisk over Hodgkin grave site in Jaffa, Israel. Moses Montefiore, on his return to England, purchased a column of Aberdeen granite nine feet tall and had it inscribed with a lengthy tribute to Hodgkin “as a mark of my respect and esteem.” It was transported to…

  • What did Dorothy Reed See?

    Sara Nassar Cairo, Egypt   Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall. Photograph by A. Pearsall, courtesy of Alan Mason Chesney Archives of John Hopkins Medical School. “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”1 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet   Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall opened the doors of medicine at…

  • Doctors like eponymity

    Denis Gill Dublin, Ireland   I must confess to liking medical eponyms. As a medical student in 1960s Dublin, we were taught the names of famous Irish physicians of the Georgian period (1780–1840), a time when Dublin was famed for its bedside teaching. Their names evoked an interest in the history of medicine and in…

  • Father’s Day on the 12th floor

    Maggie Schwarz New York City, New York, USA   Joe and Maggie Schwarz “Are you guys watching basketball? Would anyone mind if I brought my dad in here to watch tennis at 3:30?” It is a rainy Father’s Day in the visitor’s lounge on the twelfth floor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The few boys…