Day: January 30, 2017
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A publicly funded health care system of China in 11th to 3rd century BC, as recorded in the Rites of Zhou
Ping YuBethesda, Maryland, United StatesChi LuLexington, Kentucky, United States Since the dawn of history, traditional medicine has been an integral part of the Chinese civilization.1-5 Of particular interest is a publicly funded health care system that might have existed during the reign of the Zhou Dynasty (11th to 3rd century BC). Information about it is…
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Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is…
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The sweating sickness in Tudor England: A plague of the Renaissance
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction In the recent semi-fictional work by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, which takes place in the early 16th century, the protagonist Thomas Cromwell, counsel and henchman of Henry VIII, awakens in the morning to find his wife sleeping, but the sheets are damp.1 “She is warm and flushed.” He goes…
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Weighing medical evidence on a historical scale
Philip WilsonPennsylvania, United States In 1992, a clinical discipline emerged under the name Evidence-based Medicine (EBM). Now well-known, EBM refers to the “conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” (Sackett). Clinical expertise is combined with newly supported biomedical evidence obtained through systematic literature searches…
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The value of achievement
Paul G. JosephMassachusetts, Lowell, USA Jim Corbett More and more, science tells us who we are, and what we achieve are largely the result of accidents of birth and early life experience. In 1875, in northeast India at its border with Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas, was born Edward James Corbett. He was…
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Saint John of God and the origins of nursing
Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain The first biography of St. John of God was written by Francisco de Castro and is the source for most of what we know about his life. He was born João Duarte Cidade in 1495 near Évora, Portugal, in Montemor-o-Novo, a small city halfway on the road from Lisbon to Spain.…
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Muslim women healers of the medieval and early modern Ottoman Empire
Nada DarwishAlan S. WeberDoha, Qatar Although known only through court documents, legal proceedings, and references in the writings of male practitioners, the tabiba—a female practitioner of folk medicine, midwifery, and gynecology—was an important member of the medical community in the Ottoman Empire (1299–1923). The existing historical record unfortunately obscures the important role that women physicians, nurses,…
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Mark Hanna’s knees and the Panama Canal
Michael EllmanChicago, Illinois, USA Aficionados of the history of the Panama Canal know that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Nicaragua was to be the site for the “American” inter-oceanic canal. A Nicaraguan canal would be hundreds of miles closer to ports in the Gulf of Mexico…
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Choose your poison: The curious case of Dr. Waite
Lisa MullenneauxNew York, NY, USA With mahogany dining rooms, wall safes, a chauffeur’s lounge, and a curved façade designed to catch summer breezes off the Hudson River, Manhattan’s Colosseum apartments set a new standard of elegant living. Newlyweds Clara and Arthur W. Waite chose one of the deluxe full-floor, four-bedroom suites when they arrived in…