Month: January 2017
-
Masters, Lindstrom, and decanal adventures
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, USA One of the responsibilities of the dean is to foster the relationship of alumni with the school. This effort can lead to enhanced financial support, but it can also bind accomplished graduates, who may or may not think fondly of their alma mater, to the school and its programs.…
-
The incubator
MAS AhmedNatasja VandepitteLondon The incubator is a common sight in every Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Its history is of interest because of its influence on patient care and on the ensuing societal change. Babies were an exclusively female domain, and it was up to the mothers to take care of their newborns, including those…
-
A theologian answers questions about the heart: St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Motu Cordis
Michael PottsNorth Carolina, United States Suppose you are a high school teacher in a basic biology class and you have a question about the function of the heart. You decide to ask an expert, so you dial a university and ask for . . . a theologian. This is what one teacher did, although he…
-
The power of sound
Robert SiegelLos Angeles, California, United States Waking from a deep sleep or a dream can trigger a memory with an ethereal quality. This is especially true when the memory is more than 50 years old. I grew up in a home where nocturnal parties were frequent. These gatherings were attended by actors and artists, and…
-
Horace Wells
Roshan RadhakrishnanKerala, India In 1845, a dentist stepped onto the spotlight at the revered Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He wanted to show his medical brethren something unique, something unheard of back then in the field of surgery. He wanted to show them how the world could finally be rid of pain. The young man…
-
Medicine musica: the eighteenth-century rationalization of music and medicine
Daisy FancourtLondon, United Kingdom Legends of music’s healing powers on both the mind and the body are estimated to go as far back as Paleolithic times, when music was believed to be a magic that could drive away the angry spirits that caused illness.1 It wasn’t until the beginnings of learned medicine in the Greek-Roman,…
-
Madness at the opera
It is ironic and tragic that Gaetano Donizetti, author of the most famous mad scenes in the history of opera, should himself have died in a state of utter madness from what has been described “as the most terrible of all brain diseases.”1 In two of his operas, Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor, the…
-
Schubert, Schumann, and the Spirochete
Their names sound Germanic and are somewhat similar, as are their portraits. They wrote beautiful music and rank high among the great composers of the romantic era. To confuse their names would constitute an unforgivable crime, especially in the eye of music lovers. Yet in 1956 fallible East German authorities issued a stamp featuring an…
-
Surgery, note by note: Marin Marais’ “Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille”
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States How has medicine been depicted in music? Examples from the operatic stage come to mind: tuberculosis in Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Bohème; madness or delirium in the mad scene in Donizetti’s Lucia Da Lammermoor and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in Verdi’s Macbeth. It is harder to find…
-
The sound of one hand clapping: meditations on sinistrality
James L. FranklinChicago, IL Paper presented to the Chicago Literary Club on April 7, 2008 It all began on the coldest morning of the season in early December 2006. Painters were still in our apartment putting the finishing touches on what had proven to be an all too prolonged renovation project. However—the end was now…