For 25 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been publishing stories, essays, and poems that take readers into the shared space where art and medicine meet. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re marking this incredible milestone by inviting you on a journey through the BLR archive, from the beginning through the present.
Join us each week as we curate special highlights — stories, poems, photos, and more — from each of our issues.
About the Issue
This was BLR‘s first foray into theme issues, with a special section titled “Plagues & Pens: Writers Examine Infectious Diseases” that took readers on a journey through history, with poems, stories, and essays on influenza, tuberculosis, AIDS, leprosy, and more. (Healthcare workers and students with a creative bent may be particularly interested in this issue!)
Read Highlights from Issue 9
Each week, we’ll be highlighting one outstanding story, poem, and essay from the featured issue. We encourage you to explore more from the issue on our website or, better yet, to pick up a copy!
The Road to Carville
by Pat Tompkins
The back of his shirt was stuck to the car seat, and it wasn’t noon yet. When the road plowed through forest, Garlan Hamilton slowed during the stretches of shade. A ball game crackled on the radio. “Strike,” said Gar, trying to predict the next pitch. But it was ball three. “Aw, he’s gonna walk him.” He favored the Sox because he’d seen them once in Chicago once during the war. A fine city. But maybe he wouldn’t enjoy Chicago now. He hadn’t liked much since the Army.
Gar didn’t particularly like his job—“Hell, that’s why they call it work,” he’d say—but he didn’t hate it the way some people did. His job had some pluses. He traveled some, at government expense, and nobody bothered him. He listened to whatever he wanted on the radio as he guided the four-door DeSoto down dirt roads, trailing rust-colored clouds. He wanted to be left alone.
The Only Fat Man in Lascahobas
by Evan Lyon
Georges, the owner of St. Gabriel’s Funeral Enterprise, is the only fat man in Lascahobas. He met us at the gates of the funeral home where David—another American physician—and I had come to retrieve the body of one of our patients, Saintilus Joseph. We were greeted with an aggressive hospitality, as if we were traveling executives or investors visiting a new business acquisition. Georges brought out chairs and placed them for us, with a practiced, somber gracefulness, in the shade in front of the chapel. His moist-lipped smile made me suspicious. His well-fed teeth were crooked and strong, but his eyes betrayed real kindness. It was barely 10 o’clock in the morning, but Georges insisted we join him for a drink of rum; he was already drinking. He sent his loud, spoiled young son to fetch a bottle and some ice. The boy feigned drinking from the bottle and worked the crowd for a laugh, stumbling amiably around in the shade. He had the beginning of a pot-belly like his father. In a poor, rural Haitian town, clearly the funeral business was treating them well.
“Silence = Death”
by Rafael Campo
His worn-out T-shirt, black as mourning, black
as countless deaths, surprises me—it screams
a phrase I’ve heard so many countless times
before, in words hot pink as countless
fevers—heat of language, demonstrations,
why does it still threaten me, I who held
my patient’s hand who died his wordless death,
the respirator hissing in my ear
the countless breaths he couldn’t take himself.
That was years ago, almost decades now.
This photo is from the same series as the cover, taken circa 1955 outside Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This child most likely had polio. On June 27, 1927, Bellevue was the recipient of the first iron lung ever used for the treatment of paralytic poliomyelitis. (June 27th is sometimes commemorated as “Iron Lung Day.”) Iron lungs were still in use at Bellevue until well into the 1970s. During the peak years of polio, in the 1930s and 1940s, patients were usually transferred to the Willard Parker Hospital for Infectious Diseases on the Lower East Side.
The use of iron lungs decreased once the polio vaccines of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became available. Both Salk and Sabin received their medical training at NYU and did most of their medical rotations at Bellevue. Salk’s injectable “killed” vaccine was introduced and licensed in 1955. This was the first effective vaccine to prevent the paralytic complications of polio. Sabin’s 1961 oral “live” vaccine led to further reductions in spread of the disease. Together, these vaccines have eliminated naturally occurring polio from the Western Hemisphere and from nearly the entire world.
(Photo courtesy of Bellevue Hospital Archives)