Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: New York City

  • The “Ether Controversy”

    JMS Pearce Hull, England, UK   Fig 1. Warren and Morton’s operation in the Ether Dome, restaged with Mass General physicians assuming the roles of the original participants. Warren Zapol, MD, chief of anesthesia and critical care, starred as Dr. Morton, while Philip Kistler, MD, director of the Mass General stroke unit, played Dr. Warren.…

  • The striking social tableaux vivants of Lejaren à Hiller (1920s to 1940s)

    J.T.H. ConnorSt. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada In 1927 the Davis & Geck (DG) company commissioned artist Lejaren à Hiller to promote its surgical sutures. Hiller’s subsequent advertising campaign of modern art photographs was distributed to doctors across the United States and Canada during the 1920s to 1940s in simulated leather portfolios titled Sutures in Ancient Surgery…

  • To wear or not to wear? Attitudes towards mask wearing then and now

    Mariella Scerri Victor Grech Mellieha, Malta   In September 1918, the Red Cross recommended two-layer gauze masks to halt the spread of “plague.” Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia. More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged around the globe, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial frontlines in the battle against…

  • COVID-19 and the Black Death

    Colleen Donnelly  Denver, Colorado, United States   A street during the plague in London with a death cart and mourners. Colour wood engraving by E. Evans. Wellcome Library no. 6918i. Source During the fourteenth century waves of the bubonic plague washed across Europe. Doomsday books of the age described an apocalypse that wiped out one-quarter…

  • Covid-19 and the mind: a short play

    Catalina Florescu Hoboken, New Jersey, United States   Synchronized Mood by Oana Chivoiu, Assistant Professor at South Louisiana CC Characters: LOLA, late 40’s TORA, mid 40’s Setting: Two apartments in NYC. Imagine the dialogue happening in two balconies or, for a more absurd take, the same apartment divided by French doors. Time: During the historic…

  • Plagues and prejudice

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Honolulu Chinatown fire of 1900. Hawaii State Archives.  It was a calm, clear January morning on the gritty streets of paradise. Honolulu, the capital of the newly-annexed U.S. territory of Hawaii, was ushering out a century of upheaval that had included the arrival of explorers,…

  • Bellevue Hospital at the dawn of the apocalypse

    Diya BanerjeeNew York, New York, United States It is tempting to think of the history of medicine as an orderly procession of notable firsts—the first transplants, medications, wards, cures—together making up a linear march towards progress and humankind’s continual betterment. Bellevue Hospital, in its very building and plot, subscribes to the same narrative of history.…

  • The boy with the fedora

    Christopher Schayer New Haven, Connecticut, United States   Radio City Music Hall in New York City One of the many wonderful things about going to school in New Haven, Connecticut is its proximity to New York City. From the Metro North ride into the opulent Grand Central Station, to window shopping on 5th Avenue, or…