Day: January 30, 2017
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Illuminating the third millennium with flashes of experience from the 20th century
William H. WehrmacherMaywood, Illinois, United States As we vigorously plunge into our third millennium, we may gain some guidance by carefully examining the pathway experienced during the 20th century. During the first half of the 20th century, civilization expanded and improved explosively, progressing substantially in communication, transportation, food production, and manufacturing. Medical societies, publications, and…
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Chopin’s heart
Wilfred ArnoldKansas, United States In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birthday Frédéric Chopin was born near Warsaw, Poland in 1810. From 1831 he lived mostly in France, where he achieved international acclaim for his music despite a debilitating and life-shortening illness. He first began to cough up blood in 1835, and this eventually…
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Anesthesia: Culture, technology, and the rise of the surgeon
Suzanne RagaNew Jersey, USA The introduction of new technologies such as surgical anesthesia has led to better methods of diagnosis and treatment, but it also shows that the relationship between medical theory and practice is not always a smooth one. Surprisingly, anesthesia was first used for non-medical purposes, indicating that in medicine theory does not…
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The Florentine Renaissance apothecary
Susan Brunn PuettChapel Hill, NC, USAJ. David PuettAthens, GA / Chapel Hill, NC The contemporary pharmacy conjures an image of a store replete with medicines, medical paraphernalia, and at least one professionally trained pharmacist to offer advice and fill medical prescriptions. Earlier European pharmacies (apothecaries), beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing through the Renaissance…
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Arthur Wohlmann and the Rotorua Health Spa
Stewart CameronHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Dr. Arthur Stanley Wohlmann played a pivotal role in the history of New Zealand despite his great project being a calamity. Even his discipline lost stature, yet Wohlmann himself retains a positive reputation in history. In the late 1800s, the British colony of New Zealand was promoting tourism as it…
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Pig man: Pigs in medicine from Galen to transgenic xenotransplantation
Stanley GutiontovChicago, Illinois, United States The bad rap “And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.”—Leviticus 11:7 Pig: a word variably defined as “a young domesticated swine not yet sexually mature” or “a dirty, gluttonous, or repulsive person.”1 Pork may harbor within…
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Victoria’s curse
Sarah IrawaParañaque City, Philippines The dining room in an ancient hunting villa obscured in the verdant vastness of the Polish forest erupted in thunderous applause, if not rambunctious laughter. The two youngest grand duchesses just concluded their performance of two short scenes from Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme. That evening in Spala was spent reminiscent of its…
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Diagnosing defectives: Disability, gender and eugenics in the United States, 1910–1924
Sara VogtChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction The science of eugenics developed in countries around the world such as Great Britain, the United States, and Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century as a means of fighting emergent public health and social problems like tuberculosis, prostitution, and the so-called degeneration of the race. The…
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Elizabeth Fleischmann-Aschheim
Rebekah AbramovichNew York, United States Elizabeth Fleischmann-Aschheim (1865–1905) opened California’s first X-ray photography laboratory in 1896, merely one year after Roentgen’s discovery. Over the course of the next decade, this unlikely figure would become one of the most respected radiographers of those pioneering years. She was born in 1865 in El Dorado County, California, one…