Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Theodore Roosevelt

  • Las Animas: A Cuban yellow fever hospital

    Enrique Chaves-CarballoKansas City, Kansas, United StatesDavid SchwartzAtlanta, Georgia, United States John Hay, U.S. Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, described the Spanish-American War as “a splendid little war” because it was brief and resulted in relatively few casualties.1 The Treaty of Paris, formally signed on December 10, 1898, ended Spanish occupation of Cuba and established…

  • The appendicitis conundrum

    Jayant RadhakrishnanNathaniel KooDarien, Illinois, United States Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in the world. One would expect consensus regarding its management, but that has not been the case from the time the appendix was first identified. Galen (129–216 CE) was not permitted to dissect human bodies, so he dissected monkeys. Since…

  • 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…

  • The $84.77 Hospital – St. Vincent

    Terri SinnottChicago, Illinois, United States What in the United States could be purchased with $87.44 in 1881?  In that year Bishop Francis Silas Marean Chatard and four Daughters of Charity1 took that sum and funded the first Catholic hospital in Indianapolis. Chatard had been born in 1834 in Baltimore and his initial calling was medicine. …