Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Kevin r. Loughlin

  • John Hunter, Harvey Cushing, and acromegaly

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1. Charles Byrne, a giant, George Cranstoun, a dwarf, and three other normal sized men. Etching by J. Kay, 1794. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Introduction John Hunter and Harvey Cushing were two of the most preeminent surgeons of their eras. John Hunter is considered…

  • Teddy Roosevelt: Did a speech really save his life?

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1. Roosevelt’s Eyeglass Case. Photo by Rickster77 on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Figure 2. Roosevelt’s Speech With Bullet Hole. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Part of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Figure 3. Roosevelt’s Bloody Shirt. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Part of the…

  • The death of Zachary Taylor: The first presidential assassination or a bad bowl of cherries?

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1: Senator Foote pulling a revolver on Senator Benton on Senate Floor. The quote above Benson’s head reads, “Get out of the way and let the assassin fire! Let the scoundrel use his weapon! I have no arm’s(sic) I didn’t come here to assassinate.” Library of…

  • The search for Eisenhower’s adrenal tumor

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1. Letter to KRL from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology For most Americans, the knowledge of Dwight Eisenhower’s health history is limited to the fact that he had a serious heart attack while president. However, a seemingly casual comment by a non-physician political scientist, Robert…

  • Theme

    WOMEN IN MEDICINE Published in November, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .     ALICE HAMILTON     The squalid streets of working-class Chicago in the late nineteenth century would have been something of a shock to the girl who grew up in a sheltered but educated household…

  • A 130-year-old medical cold case: Who was Jack the Ripper?

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, USA   As murder followed murder and mutilated bodies were discovered and described in the press, one can imagine the fear that swept the hardscrabble Whitechapel section of London in 1888. Populated with many immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia, unemployment was rampant and tenements were found on most…

  • The arrival of the black horse

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Four horsemen of Apocalypse (1887) by Viktor Vasnetsov When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.”  I looked and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something…

  • The Irish famine: catastrophe, diaspora, and redemption

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Famine sculpture in Dublin Tensions between the English and the Irish date back to at least the time of Prince John Lackland, who was made Lord of Ireland by his father, Henry II of England in 1177.1 Anti-Catholic sentiments were pronounced by Oliver Cromwell after his invasion…