Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: lymphoma

  • The guinea pig’s gift: Serendipity and the starvation of leukemia

    Prasad IyerSingapore Medical breakthroughs often arrive not with a fanfare of logic, but with the quiet, baffling persistence of a laboratory anomaly that refuses to be ignored. In 1953, the laboratories of Cornell University Medical College operated in a world away from the high-stakes precision of modern oncology. Dr. John Kidd was not hunting for…

  • Denis Parsons Burkitt

    JMS PearceHull, England Aphorisms from wise medical men and women have fallen out of fashion. Because each line is to a degree debatable, one of my favorites is: Attitudes are more important than abilities.Motives are more important than methods.Character is more important than cleverness.Perseverance is more important than power.And the heart takes precedence over the…

  • Modern day obstinacy: the persistence of pangalintaw

    Halima AbdulmaguidNorth Cotabato, Philippines In the first week of June, my mother was rushed to the hospital because her cough was getting worse and her shoulder pain no longer bearable. On her x-ray film we saw that half of her lungs were not visible; there was fluid inside causing the obscurity, and there was also…

  • The first effective chemotherapy for cancer

    Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States 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 conflicts at least fifteen times between 1919 and 2016—in the Iraq-Iran War, by…