Tag: Joseph deBettencourt
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History repeated: Child abuse in the United States
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States Q: Did you see any place for this child to sleep in?A: No, Sir, except in one corner. The child told me she slept up in one corner of the room under the window.Q: Did she show you where she slept?A: No, Sir.Q: Did she state what she slept on?A:…
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Theo’s marvelous medicine
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, USA On a cool December day in 1960, a nanny was pushing an infant in a stroller down 85th Street in New York City. Stepping into the road, the nanny saw a taxi whip around the corner and before she could react, the stroller was struck by the taxi and knocked into…
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Korotkov’s Sound
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States I’m watching, knees bending,Looking meek, my heart quiet,Drifting away are the shadowsOf fussy world affairsWhile I’m envisioning, dreaming ofvoices from other worlds -Aleksandr Blok, untitled poem, July 3, 1901a Stepping off the train in northern China, Nikolai Korotkov was the farthest he had ever been from home. He would have…
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Stephen Hales: belief and blood pressure
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States “It would but ill become us in this our State of Uncertainty, to treat the Errors and Mistakes of others with Scorn and Contempt, when we ourselves see Things but as through a Glass darkly, and are very far from any Pretensions to Infallibility”— Stephen Hales, Haemastatics Stephen Hales’ father…
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The founding of Rush Medical College
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States Act I: Dr. Daniel Brainard Beneath the impressive shadow of Notre Dame, a young American cut a path through the winding cobblestone maze of the Île de la Cité to the doors of the Hôtel Dieu, Paris’ oldest hospital. The young man carried with him a diploma from a small…
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A hospital for sick children
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States Down a narrow street in an old London neighborhood sat a large, forgotten house. It used to belong to a well-known doctor who built an addition just for his medical library, inviting students to come and pour over the leather bound tomes he spent his life acquiring. With the windows…