Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: War & Veterans

  • Russia’s “Great Patriotic War” and its generals

    When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, its forces advanced with a ferocity that shattered Soviet defenses. Hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. By the winter of 1941, the Wehrmacht stood at the gates of Moscow and of Leningrad. In occupied territories, Nazi racial ideology translated…

  • Hiroshima: Are its lessons fading?

    Barry PerlmanNew York, New York, United States For much of my eighty-one years, the threat of nuclear war remained a subliminal fear. Recently, its possibility has roared back into my consciousness. The commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the first, and we pray last, uses of the atomic bombs in war, along with bold headlines…

  • Artists at war

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author and poet, served as a nurse during the United States Civil War. In 1862, she worked at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Washington, DC, where she found appalling conditions. She attended the wounded, fed them, and assisted at operations until she contracted severe typhoid fever herself. She…

  • The Siege of Constantinople as witnessed by a physician, 1453

    The diary by Nicolò Barbaro of the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks remains one of the most valuable firsthand sources of the seven-week siege of the Byzantine capital by the forces of Sultan Mehmed II. The author was an Italian physician, born into a prominent Venetian family, who may have been in Constantinople…

  • Curing in bureaucracy: Medical professionals and the rise of the US pension system

    Catherine TangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The rise of the American federal pension system in the wake of the Civil War made doctors suddenly responsible for denying or approving veterans’ pension applications. This new legal duty sometimes strained the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. John W. Wright, an ophthalmologist in Columbus, OH, recognized that some veterans would have…

  • Heroic surgeon: Noel Godfrey Chavasse (1884–1917)

    JMS PearceHull, England Britain can boast a variety of displays of memorial celebrations—regal, national, military, and personal—in an unrivalled blend of splendor and disciplined discretion. Of several decorations, symbolised by medals, the Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest of all military gallantry awards.* Only three people have ever twice been awarded the VC. And only…

  • Resolution

    Gaetan SgroPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States noun1. an expression of will or intent; a commitment In June 1965, Edward White, one of two astronauts aboard the Gemini IV mission, becomes the first American to walk in space. He floats free of the capsule for twenty minutes, and is so transfixed by the experience that Gus Grissom,…

  • Thank you for your service

    Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, USA As a reservist, I had heard those words on numerous occasions. I appreciated and understood that those words were not directed specifically towards me, but rather to the uniform that I was wearing. Although I had spent twenty-five years in uniform, I felt unworthy and undeserving of those words. I…

  • Ought to kill or ought to heal? The importance of medicine in the history of warfare

    Erick ScherfSanta Catarina, Brazil All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.—Alexis de Tocqueville War has been written about since the beginning of human history. It was notably recorded by Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian…

  • The Changi diary and paintings: The partnership of a doctor and an artist

    Robert CraigBrisbane, Queensland, Australia Three paintings and a diary in a handwritten exercise book are in the collection of the Marks Hirschfeld Medical Museum in Brisbane, Australia. They represent an episode of extraordinary courage, survival, cooperation, and perseverance by two prisoners of war (Vaughan Murray Griffin and Dr. Burnett Clarke) during World War Two (Clarke 1989).…