Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: the War of the Pacific

  • 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…

  • Peleliu as a paradigm for PTSD: The two thousand yard stare

    Gregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States “I noticed a tattered marine…staring stiffly at nothing. His mind had crumbled in battle…his eyes were like two black empty holes in his head…Last evening he came down out of the hills. Told to get some sleep, he found a shell crater and slumped into it…First light has given his…

  • The “Bangka Island Massacre”: Australian military nurses in the Pacific War

    Angharad FletcherLondon and Hong Kong “Civilian nurses, bound on errands of mercy among the worst underworld dens, are never in danger from the most hardened criminals. But Australia’s nurses were not safe from the Japanese. No British citizen forgets the name of Nurse Edith Cavell. Australia now has her own Edith Cavells to remember.”1 Sometime…