Month: January 2017
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The last days of George Washington
When George Washington developed laryngitis and shortness of breath in 1799, his doctors used poultices, enemas, and opened his veins to remove almost half of all his blood in 12 hours. Shown on his deathbed in a painting recently dubbed Death by Malpractice, the first president of the United States was 67 years old at…
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William Pitt: Father and son
Two great political figures, William Pitt the Elder (later to become Lord Chatham) and William Pitt the Younger, shaped the destinies of Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century. The father was the main architect of England’s victory in the Seven Years War (in America the French-Indian War). The son became the youngest…
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The Emperor Maximilian II and his physicians
Maximilian II (1527–1576) of the House of Habsburg was Holy Roman Emperor as well as king of Bohemia, Croatia, and Hungary. The Emperor . . . had long suffered from gout, from heart attacks, from bouts of “kidney colic,” [and] quite possibly syphilis, that had been sweeping across Europe since the turn of the 16th century.…
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King Henry VIII: More ailments than wives
The younger sons of medieval kings would generally be doomed to live out their lives in relative obscurity unless raised to the crown by courtesy of the plague, smallpox, or pneumonia. Such was the case of Henry VIII, remembered among other achievements for his seven wives but also by his many bodily illnesses. He became…
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The mystical prophet and his Bride of Christ
Hansjörg RotheAustria and Klinikum Coburg, Germany In 1648, the year when the exhausted European powers at last ended the Thirty Years’ War, the Orthodox Ukrainian peasants rose against their Catholic Polish overlords and the Cossacks staged murderous pogroms and killed a large number of the local Jews, who were often tax collectors and administrators on…
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Mingling medicine and medals
Ira RezakStony Brook, New York, United States When I was nine or ten, my grandfather gave me a Dutch two and a half guilder, which looked like a dollar but which I soon found out could not be spent in Brooklyn. After frustration came curiosity about the strange language, coat of arms, and denomination that…
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Meeting of minds: When scientists and artists meet
James MathewMilwaukee, Wisconsin, United States Away from the glitter and noise of the Toronto International Film Festival, two men met for dinner on the thirty-eighth floor of the Westin Harbor Palace. They dined on vegetables and seafood while enjoying a spectacular view of Lake Ontario, its gentle ripples sparkling with the colors of the setting…
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The arsenic eaters of Styria
John ParascandolaMaryland, United States In 1851, the medical world learned of the curious practice of arsenic eating among peasants in Styria (now a region of Austria) through an article in a Viennese medical journal by Swiss physician, naturalist, and traveler Johann Jakob von Tschudi. The stimulus for this paper was a trial involving a poisoning…
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Doctor Riker’s decision
Julie GianakonPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On the frigid Christmas night of 1776, Dr. John Riker was alarmed by the baying of dogs outside his New Jersey home. He went out into the darkness and discovered that the cause of the commotion was a regiment of armed men. Assuming they belonged to the British army, he angrily ordered…
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A one-millimeter push revolutionizes ear surgery: The story of Samuel Rosen and surgery of the stapes bone
Mahmood BhuttaLondon In 1952 Dr. Samuel Rosen gently pushed the stapes of a man on whose ear he was operating.1 The stapes is the smallest bone in the body and the last of the three bones of hearing. Rosen was not sure whether or not the stapes had moved and so he pushed just a millimeter…