Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Obstretics

  • Book review: The Doctors Blackwell

    Elizabeth Coon Eelco Wijdicks Rochester, Minnesota, United States   The Doctors Blackwell. Janice P. Nimura. Edith Lutzker celebrated the centennial anniversary of the struggle of five British heroines in her 1969 groundbreaking book Woman Gain A Place in Medicine. Much less has been written on women physicians in Europe and Asia, but the Italian universities…

  • Becoming a doctor in Chicago (c.1954)—Clerkships at Michael Reese Hospital

    Peter Berczeller Edited by Paul Berczeller An excerpt from Dr. Peter Berczeller’s memoir, The Little White Coat.   Michael Reese Hospital. Postcard by Curt Teich. 1950. No known copyright for Curt Teich postcards printed before 1964. After Cook County, my group and I moved over to Michael Reese Hospital—a pile of old buildings on the…

  • Infertility in Nigeria and the race for parenthood

    Princewill Udom Port Harcourt, Nigeria   Infertility is a growing problem in Nigeria. In one study, researchers found that female gender-related causes accounted for 42.9% of infertility, in contrast to male causes, which were about half that number.1 Common causes are broadly categorized into genetic, physiological, endocrine, and lifestyle factors. One consequence of this problem…

  • Loyal Davis, legendary neurosurgeon (1896-1982)

      For more than thirty years, in an era less politically correct than ours, Dr. Loyal Davis reigned supreme as chief of surgery at the Northwestern University medical school in Chicago. He retired in 1963, but stories about him persisted as lively subjects of conversation and amusement, to be told with relish at meetings and…

  • Enough

    Laura Loertscher Portland, Oregon, United States   Photograph of author (Laura Loertscher) and her son. Personal photograph taken by author’s husband, Jesus Moreno, and submitted with his permission. The last food you ever ate was a cup of orange sherbet from the nurses’ station. I saw no reason to make you NPO. After all, you…

  • Bob Edwards and the perils of publicity

    James Owen Drife Leeds, United Kingdom   Edwards (seated, left) and Steptoe brief the press at Oldham General Hospital after the birth of Louise Brown. A license to publish in Hektoen International has been obtained from Press Association Photos Limited, London. The physiologist Robert Edwards began thinking about human in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1950s and…