Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Summer 2019

  • A house call

    Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States Many years ago, in the mid 1980s, when I was still in clinical practice, I made a house call accompanied by a second year medical student who was coming to my office one day a week as part of her course in physical diagnosis. The patient I had been called…

  • Daniel Carrion and his disease

    In 1879 an armed conflict known as the War of the Pacific broke out between three South American nations, pitting Chile against a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance in a dispute over land rich in minerals, especially sodium nitrate. The Chileans defeated their adversaries by land and sea, their armies invading Peru, occupying Lima, eventually annexing valuable territory…