Month: October 2017
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Birthday party
Laura WhiteRochester, Minnesota, United States I scan the chemotherapy data into the computer system, noting the date of birth listed at the top right of the screen. Happy birthday, I say, hanging the bag of liquid on the IV pole. Thanks, he replies, and we share a contemptuous laugh. It feels like a sick joke,…
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“I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet”: prosopagnosia
Sylvia KarasuNew York City, New York, United States Watching Black Narcissus, the eerily unsettling film1 about an order of nuns cloistered in an isolated, windswept convent perched within the Himalayas, I am struggling to differentiate one nun from another. I see the nuns’ faces clearly but their hair is not visible. Hair is the first…
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Antonio Scarpa, anatomist (1752–1832)
Students graduating from a university not uncommonly leave and seek employment elsewhere, but by the excellence of their work attain great fame and as such repay their alma mater for their early education. This was the case of Antonio Scarpa. Entering the University of Padua at age fifteen, he studied under the famous Battista Morgagni…
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Ghabeleh Hamleh
Suzi Ehtesham-ZadehWoodstock, Georgia, United States The pounding in Amana’s temples will not let up and is beginning to scare her. She has had headaches before, but this is different—it feels like something foreign has invaded her body and is occupying every square inch of it, from the tips of her fingers, which won’t stop tingling,…
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Foundations of anatomy in Bologna
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Home to the oldest western university,1 the University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and was a center of intellectual life during the Middle Ages, attracting scholars from throughout Europe. The University began as a law school. Medical teaching started circa 1156 and was taught in Latin translations, principally based on…
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The “English Hippocrates” and the disease of kings
Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) is known as “The English Hippocrates” because of his detailed physical examinations, painstaking record keeping, and attention to the treatment of illness.1 At a time when the medical profession espoused theory and systemization, his belief in the power of observation and primary experience over scientific theory…
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George Orwell and the ethics of dealing in or dealing with cigarettes
Lynn T. KozlowskiBuffalo, NY, United States Early in World War II, George Orwell wrote the essay “England, my England,” commenting that as he was writing “highly civilized human beings” were flying overhead trying to kill him: They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing…
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Alabama and the healing of memories
Jack Coulehan Stony Brook, New York, United States T.S. Eliot’s poem “Burnt Norton” begins with the famous lines: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past.” 1My memories are a part of my present experience. I recall clinical experiences of all sorts, good…