Las Animas: A Cuban yellow fever hospital
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States David Schwartz Atlanta, Georgia, United States Fig. 1. Ward 1 of Las Animas Hospital for yellow fever patients. First published in 1904 by Enrique Barnet in his monograph on Las Animas Hospital.3 Public domain. John Hay, U.S. Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, described the Spanish-American War […]
The appendicitis conundrum
Jayant Radhakrishnan Nathaniel Koo Darien, Illinois, United States Lorenz Heister (1683-1758) was a German surgeon and anatomist. In 1711, he described acute appendicitis in great detail and suggested that it be treated. From Institutiones chirurgicae, in quibus quicquid ad rem chirurgicam pertinet optima et novissima ratione pertractatur, Neapel, Antonio Cervone, 1749. Via Wikimedia. No […]
Death, disease, and discrimination during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914)
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas, United States Theodore Roosevelt, portrait, ca. 1904, Wikipedia Commons, public domain. 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 […]
The $84.77 Hospital – St. Vincent
Terri Sinnott Chicago, Illinois, United States Bishop Francis Silas Marean Chatard 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 […]