Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Philadelphia

  • Albert C. Barnes, MD: the physician who spun silver into gold

    Sylvia KarasuNew York, New York, United States Albert C. Barnes is known as the man who accumulated an incomparable art collection for a foundation that bears his name. Few, though, may know how he earned a place in the history of medicine, specifically through his development of Argyrol, the unique compound that was the source…

  • Samuel Mudd, MD: Good Samaritan or conspirator?

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States As he rose in the Washington, D.C. courtroom on June 30, 1865, to hear his verdict, Dr. Samuel Mudd looked older than his thirty-one years (Figure 1). His odobene mustache framed his mouth and his goatee was speckled with prematurely gray hair. His shoulders were slightly slouched and perspiration…

  • Dr. Fanny Halpern, a psychiatric go-between of 1930s Shanghai

    Richard ZhangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On September 20, 1935, a lengthy advertisement in one of Shanghai’s most popular newspapers, the Shen Bao, celebrated the recent opening of the Shanghai Puci Sanatorium (上海普濨療養院).1 The sanatorium would later be known in Western histories as The Mercy Hospital for Nervous Diseases. The advertisement lauded the Puci Sanatorium, headed…

  • A case of toxic blood

    Shruthi DeivasigamaniPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On a blustery winter day, a molecule of water condenses around a particle of dust in the air. The structure grows in size as it falls closer to earth, and before it hits the ground outside, it has crystallized into a perfect, six-sided snowflake. Miles away, a thirty-one-year-old woman is…

  • A city of two tales

    J. Trig BrownDurham, North Carolina, United States CME dawns.Hello, Philly,city of brotherly love,home to Homeless Jesus two blocks off Broad.In unmoving repose, he moves those willing to be moved. Coffee balanced on my knee,snacking on multiple small feedings of the mind, Isit, meet the professors andplod zombie-like from Arch to Racebathed in my privilegeblathering about…

  • Dr. Rebecca Cole and racial health disparities in nineteenth-century Philadelphia

    Meg Vigil-FowlerGrand Junction, Colorado From the beginning of black women’s professional involvement in medicine, public health marked a central component of the scope of their practice. Rebecca Cole, the second black woman physician in the United States, began her career as the “sanitary visitor” in the late 1860s for the New York Infirmary for Women…

  • Labor of love

    Mary OakSeattle, Washington, USA Each week my elderly father and I watch babies being born. In the silver-shadowed flickers of a television, we sit as we often did in my childhood. Now in the spectral shade of his decelerated years, I care for him. He spends a lot of time watching TV. I join him…

  • Philadelphia’s plague

    Hayat El BoukariTetouan, Morocco On August 3, 1793, a young French sailor rooming at Richard Denney’s boarding house was desperately ill with a fever.1 As he was a poor foreigner, no one bothered to find out his name. His fever worsening, he died a few days later, as also did eight residents from two houses…

  • When empathy strikes and the curtain falls

    Yasmine Koukaz Philadelphia, PA, United States   One slow November afternoon, while sitting in an advisory dean’s meeting about the countless items I needed to add to my resume before applying to residency, I received a surprise in my inbox. It was an email about a fifteen-week theater course that would be held on campus…