Tag: Gregory W. Rutecki
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Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and their doctor are dead
Joshua Niforatos Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States ROSENCRANTZ: “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering – stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I…
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Retirement reflections: from code to compassion with Chloe
Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States Daphnis & Chloe, by Henry Woods, R.A William May and Samuel Shem have described inadequacies of doctor-patient relationships that are characterized as code models.1,2 May observed that these medical codes binding patients and their physicians together shape relationships similar to habits or rules, are aesthetic, and value style over…
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From bedside to bench and beyond: the legacy of Dr. Eric G.L. Bywaters
Joshua Niforatos Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States E.G.L. Bywaters. University of British Columbia, Open Collections The historian John Lukacs, a contemporary of pioneering British physician Eric G. L. Bywaters (1910-2003), wrote in his book At the End of an Age that “the history of anything amounts to that thing itself.”1 Lukacs, influenced by physicists…
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Is Daddy a good doctor?
Gregory W Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio Tears at Calling Hours George Lundberg posed an intriguing question for a generation of physicians: why don’t more doctors go to the funerals or calling hours of their patients?1 In fact, he boldly predicted that the only funeral you can be sure your physician will attend will be that of his…
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Art, Cristobal Rojas, and tuberculosis: a Latin American cultural experience
Maria S. LandaetaAldo L. SchenoneGregory W. Rutecki Tuberculosis, the “captain of all these men of death,” has devastated diverse societies for thousands of years. How are experiences related to this unforgiving and seemingly insatiable disease made unique by their cultural contexts? The visual arts provide a record of this disease as it relates to specific…
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Abbott Handerson Thayer’s art and fin de siècle American culture
Gregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849–1921) straddled the fin de siècle, and with his brush preserved an American counterculture for posterity. His variegated oeuvre reflects substantive reflections of his period’s medical and religious culture, as well as the earliest American naturalism. His was a momentous time as science unfolded the implications of…
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When the sensory lens is an artistic prism: the brain, Kandinsky, and multisensory art
Gregory W. RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States In 1812 an Austrian physician named Georg Sachs published a medical dissertation about his family’s albinism.1,2 Conspicuous by inclusion, Sachs claimed to simultaneously hear and see colored music. His claim of a sensory duality is considered the first explicit mention of what would be later identified as synesthesia (from…