Tag: George Dunea
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Renal reminiscences
Medical conferences are an opportunity to travel and to meet. During the early days when renal transplantation, dialysis, and biopsy revolutionized nephrology, I had the opportunity to meet many members of the new discipline. I once listened to Jean Hamburger lecture about kidney transplants. I heard Robert Schrier lecture on salt and water. One summer…
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Additional French surgeons
By the close of the fourteenth century, France emerged as the preeminent center of European surgical practice. Its early pioneers included Theodoric Borgognoni of Lucca (1205–1296), who played a pivotal role in elevating surgery from a craft to a respected medical discipline; Guido Lanfranc of Milan (1250–1315), who further refined surgical techniques; and Henri de…
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Liver, lime, and vitamins
The history of vitamins traces back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who observed that certain foods were important in maintaining health. These observations were later supplemented by clinical studies. Among these studies were those of the Russian physician Nikolai Lunin. As a student in Basel in 1881, he fed groups of mice with…
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it…
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Epidemics: The deadly foes of humanity
There was a time when humans may have solely attributed their illnesses to powers that could turn rivers into blood, kill firstborns, unleash swarms of frogs, lice, flies, and locusts (Exodus 7-10), cause contagious skin diseases (Leviticus 13:2-33), or send hideous, dangerous serpents to kill evildoers (Numbers 21:5-9).1 But in the relatively brief time of…
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The final illness of Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was one of the most important American novelists and short story writers of the early 20th century. When he died as a young man in 1938, he joined the long list of literati victims of the dreaded “captain of these men of death”—John Keats, Percy Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson,…
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Restaurants high and low
In Antiquity and the Middle Ages Restaurants, like facilities caring for the sick, have existed in one form or another since the dawn of history. In ancient Greece and Rome, the common people in Rome bought their food from small “thermopolia” or from “popinas”, some of which like our pubs or wine bars provided only…
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Thomas Wakley (1795–1862) and The Lancet
When in April 1820 five members of a radical group plotted to murder the British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, they were sentenced to be hanged as well as publicly decapitated and dissected. An unknown man wearing a mask appeared in the square and carried out the task with such speed and dexterity that people thought…
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A belated reunion
A yellowing page of uncertain date from a Chicago newspaper tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl who had her legs crushed and her pelvis broken in an automobile accident. At the hospital, all experienced surgeons said the case was hopeless. But a young surgical intern undertook her care, visited her every day, and dressed…
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Vespasian toilets
Titus Flavius Vespasianus became Roman emperor in AD 69 following the death of Nero and the brief reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Remembered for his conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by his son Titus, Vespasian set about to restore the damage and destruction the city and its empire had…