Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: West Indies

  • Pain versus survival

    Marissa ArmoogamTrinidad & Tobago, West Indies Pain has long been a given in any surgical procedure, but thanks to the many advances in medicine and particularly in anesthesia, the experience of insurmountable pain has been greatly quelled. There have been, however, cases when men or women have been thrown into the all-consuming grasp of pain…

  • 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 illness of Tom Wedgwood: A tragic episode in a family saga

    John Hayman Melbourne, Australia Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was born into the famous pottery dynasty as the third surviving son of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and his wife Sarah (1734-1815). Sarah was also a Wedgwood, a distant cousin of her husband.1 Tom was ill for all of his short life, a life recorded by his biographer, Richard…