Tag: Spring 2015
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Dr. Willem J. Kolff: a great man
George DuneaChicago, IL In MemoriamWillem J. Kolff: A great man Willem Kolff, often called the father of the artificial kidney,died in January 2009, 3 days before his 98th birthday. During his long life he received numerous honors and accolades for his work. Many people thought he should have received the Nobel Prize, but as he once said himself, they do…
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Gorgas Hospital, Ancon, Panama
W. Paul McKinneyLouisville, Kentucky, United States 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 and Pacific Oceans in the late nineteenth century. Despite the best efforts of the French, the…
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St. Christopher’s Hospice
Thomas EgnewWashington, United States The twentieth century produced an extraordinary evolution in modern medicine. Burgeoning research and the rigorous application of the biomedical model generated remarkable advances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.1 Refinements in immunization decreased morbidity and mortality from common infectious diseases and the development of antibiotics provided the means to change…
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Reconstructing the world’s first hospital: The Basiliad
Thomas HeyneBoston, United States “A noble thing is philanthropy, and the support of the poor, and the assistance of human weakness…” So rang the emotional words of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen during the funeral oration delivered for his dear friend Basil of Caesarea in 379. Wishing to remind his audience of Basil’s charity towards the poor,…
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Trafford General Hospital: A conjuring of spatial significance
Sang Ik SongLimerick, Ireland On July 5, 1948, the then health secretary Aneurin Bevan officially launched the British National Health Service (NHS) at Trafford’s Park Hospital.1 The picture of Nye Bevan, suited and clean cut by the bedside of Sylvia Diggory, the first NHS patient, stands iconic in the heralding of a new age of…
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The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary
Samantha WilliamsonChicago, Illinois, United States The direct ophthalmoscope debuted in Germany in 1851, ushering in the modern era of ophthalmology. Seven years later, the introduction of the laryngoscope allowed direct visualization of the airway. In 1858, on the heel of these discoveries, Edward Holmes, a Massachusetts native who had trained in Vienna and Berlin, opened…
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Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, 600 years of history
Rosa Monteserín NadalEap Sardenya, Barcelona, Spain The Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona is the oldest hospital in Spain. It was founded in 1401, after a pest plague and famine caused six medieval hospitals in Barcelona to merge and form the Hospital de la Santa Creu. This functioned until the 1930s,…
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Provident Hospital – the first Black owned and operated medical institution in the United States
Raymond H. CurryVeeLa Sengstacke GonzalesChicago, Illinois, United States Prior to 1891 there was not in this country a single hospital or training school for nurses owned and managed by colored people . . . there are now twelve! . . . and not a single failure in the effort!– Daniel Hale Williams, 19001 Emma Reynolds, a…
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Massachusetts General Hospital, 1992
Randall S. StaffordCalifornia, United States To be summoned to pronounce the end of a patient’s life is always unnerving and he was my first death during my Massachusetts General Hospital internship. The task required a physician, no matter how inexperienced. My patient, the eighty-one year-old Mr. H., was one of the privileged class of old…
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The Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore
Preeti ShanbagMumbai, India The Christian Medical College Hospital was founded by Ida Sophia Scudder in 1900, in response to a calling. Daughter of a North American missionary couple working in India, she was born in Tindivanum in south India in 1870. Her earliest experiences of India were of the terrible famine of the 1880s and…