Tag: Thomas Browne
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Book review: Sir Thomas Browne: The Opium of Time
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Sir William Osler was a great admirer of Sir Thomas Browne’s 1643 Religio Medici, one of his favorite books and on his recommended reading list for medical men. Browne influenced many writers, such as Samuel Johnson, WG Sebald, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad, and EM Forster. In this slim volume, Gavin…
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“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”: Who said it first?
Robert Schell Brooklyn, New York Biblical inspiration: Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple (or The Purification of the Temple). El Greco, c. 1600, Frick Collection. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In these days of rampant biomedical commercialization, the Bible-inspired admonition “No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”…
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Book review: The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis Gets Us Wrong
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Making the right diagnosis is central to the medical encounter. A doctor always started off by taking a history, examining the patient, and sometimes performing additional tests. But when a creditable diagnosis could not be made, the medical profession often invented conditions that later were shown not to exist. Such…
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Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne
“Were I of Caesar’s Religion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick;…