Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Panama Canal

  • Death, disease, and discrimination during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904–1914)

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland Park, Kansas, United States Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1858–1919) President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned an interoceanic canal as indispensable for American “dominance at the seas.”1 An isthmian canal would facilitate rapid deployment of U.S. Navy ships from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans, bypassing the arduous 2,000-mile trip around the tip of South America. However, construction of…

  • Darling of Panama

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States 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. He studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore, graduating in 1903 at the top of his class and…

  • William Gorgas – Life and medical legacy

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States 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 to render the Isthmus healthy and habitable to outsiders had been unsuccessful.…

  • Mark Hanna’s knees and the Panama Canal

    Michael EllmanChicago, Illinois, USA Aficionados of the history of the Panama Canal know that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Nicaragua was to be the site for the “American” inter-oceanic canal. A Nicaraguan canal would be hundreds of miles closer to ports in the Gulf of Mexico…