Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: malaria

  • Darling of Panama

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States   Samuel Taylor Darling at age 51, portrait by Underwwod & Underwood, 1923. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Samuel Taylor Darling, widely considered as the foremost American tropical parasitologist and pathologist of his time, was born in Harrison, New Jersey on April 6, 1872.…

  • Tu Youyou, discoverer of artemisinin for resistant malaria

    Tu Youyou, Nobel Laureate in medicine in Stockholm December 2015. Photo by Bengt Nyman. December 6, 2015. The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou received the 2011 Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating a chemical agent to be used in the treatment of resistant malaria. Born in…

  • Heterozygous advantage: How one deadly disease prevents another

    Neal Krishna Boston, Massachusetts, United States   An allegory of malaria. Process print after M. Sand. Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. Of all the genetic disorders to which man is known to be a victim, there is no other that presents an assemblage of problems and challenges quite comparable to sickle cell anemia. Because of…

  • Gandhiji on Indianness of health and healthcare (1869–1948)

    Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India   In 2019, 150 years after Mahatma Gandhiji’s birth, India celebrates his birthday to honor his legacy and his contributions to the welfare of this nation. We remember him with his alluring smile, in loin cloth, shawl, and thin-framed glasses, his attire representing his message to lead a simple…

  • John Calvin: his rule in Geneva and his many illnesses

    At the age of twenty-three the great French religious reformer abandoned his Catholic faith, becoming in time the founder of one of the most important branches of Protestantism. During his life he wrote numerous tracts on various aspects of religion, notably emphasizing predestination and the supremacy of the Trinity, and advocating a simpler and more…

  • Quinine and the cinchona plant: Gain or bane for Africa?

    Lom NingBamenda, Republic of Cameroon “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all doctors in the Empire.”1 This statement by Winston Churchill referred to the bitter-tasting substance in tonic water, quinine. This antimalarial alkaloid did save lives, but also propelled the economy and prestige of the British Empire as it…

  • Grandfather of allergy: Dr. Bill Frankland, the ardent centenarian

    John Turner United Kingdom   Captain A. W. Frankland Image credit Paul Watkins Research for Far East Prisoners of War History Group Fepowhistory.com “For your final choice?” Dr. William Frankland at one hundred and three, the oldest guest ever to appear in the London studio of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, chose Elgar’s Nimrod in…

  • William Gorgas – Life and medical legacy

    Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of William C. Gorgas. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. The Panama Canal Zone in the early 1900s was described as “one of the must unhealthful places in the world.”1 Ridden with mosquitoes, the Isthmus of Panama was a hotbed of yellow fever, malaria, and pneumonia. Previous efforts…

  • Gorgas Hospital, Ancon, Panama

    W. Paul McKinney Louisville, Kentucky, United States    West-facing view of Administration and Clinics Building, Gorgas Hospital, Ancon, former Canal Zone, Panama A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. This well-known palindrome describes the grand vision of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps for constructing, under the flag of France, a sea level canal linking the Atlantic…

  • Ronald Ross: polymath and discoverer

    Satish Saroshe Indore, India   Sir Ronald Ross with microscope. Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia. CC BY 4.0. Sir Ronald Ross received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for discovering the malaria parasite in the stomach of a mosquito, thereby proving that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes and laying the foundation for future methods of combating the disease. Born in Almora,…