Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: infectious disease

  • Path of compassion

    Raisa ZubarevaWarsaw, Poland In humble circumstances in one of London’s asylums for the insane, Kate Marsden, a nurse and philanthropist who devoted her life to saving others, died on 29 May 1931. She had been the ministering angel of Siberians affected with leprosy. Kate Marsden was born in May 1859, the youngest of seven children.…

  • Disease mapping: Tracing the urban epidemic

    Astrid PrimadhaniJakarta, Indonesia In August 1854 a deadly cholera outbreak struck the Soho neighborhood of London.1 Within thirty-six hours, rapid death ensued as the dense and unsanitary condition of the working-class neighborhood became a haven for the spread of the bacteria. In two weeks, over seven hundred people, 10% of the neighborhood, died.2 Elsewhere around…

  • Tales from the crypt: The mosaic symbolism of Louis Pasteur’s tomb

    Abigail ClineAugusta, Georgia, United States Hidden behind the Montparnasse Railway Station is the elegant brick and stone building of the Pasteur Institute. Since its opening in 1887, the Pasteur Institute has been on the front line in the battle against infectious disease. Consisting of research departments studying everything from neuroscience to genomics to epidemiology, the…

  • Leprosy: A nearly forgotten malady

    JMS PearceHull Royal Infirmary Leprosy was the first proven instance of a bacterium causing a human disease. Along with plague, poliomyelitis, and smallpox, leprosy has beleaguered mankind for millennia, causing devastating and often fatal infections that were historically impossible to cure or prevent. The nervous system, skin,and eyes are the main sites affected. The word…

  • Reflections on early 20th century tuberculosis: a juxtaposition of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Edward L. Trudeau’s Autobiography

    Gregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States The early twentieth century was an auspicious time for medicine. Physicians of the era would be the first to transform the mysterious “captain of all these men of death” into a living, “breathing” bacillus named Mycobacterium tuberculosis.1 As a corollary of the fundamental discovery, diagnostic and therapeutic innovations began in…

  • Ernest Black Struthers: missionary life, kala azar, and military strife

    Peter KopplinToronto, Canada In 1934 the third edition of Cecil’s A Textbook of Medicine contained a chapter by an academically obscure missionary in China.1 Russell Cecil, still editing the book by himself with only the help of a neurology colleague, chose Ernest Black Struthers to write about kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis). Most North American physicians…

  • Bari in the seventh cholera pandemic

    Salvatore BarbutiMoro, Italy Domenico MartinelliRosa PratoFoggia, Italy It all began on a quiet warm afternoon in August 1973 when an infectious diseases specialist called his friend in public health and hesitantly asked for a test on stool sample for a patient whom he believed could be infected with cholera. The public health man laughed and…

  • Public health measures derived from the Jewish tradition: II. Washing and cleaning

    Tova Chein,Mark Epelbaum,Robert SternNew York, New York, United States Introduction Historically, Jewish contributions to public health measures have not been given adequate attribution. The previous article in this series (Hektoen International, Winter 2016) documented the ancient Jewish recognition of the importance of: The ritual washing of hands There are many forms of washing identified in the…

  • Plague Sydney 1900

    Barry R. CatchloveSydney Introduction Bubonic plague has been the most feared disease throughout history. Most people are aware of its ravages but see it as a pestilence of the middle ages. Few are aware that it remains a disease of the twenty-first century, is endemic in many parts of the developed and underdeveloped world, and…