Month: March 2018
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A mother’s voice
Kelsey HartDenver, Colorado, United States I sit in the blue plastic recliner, coping with the familiar feeling of boredom and anxiety by flicking through a game on my phone. My daughter dozes in the climate-controlled isolette in front of me. I glance up at the white board hanging on the wall. My daughter lost 20…
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A proliferation of monsters: Art of the weird as expressions of anxiety in Britain and Japan
Steve WheelerGreenwich, London, England The human fascination with fear of the unknown has been documented in art and literature across civilization for centuries. In every culture, this has manifested itself in the form of creatures as bizarre as they are terrifying. Since the evolution of language, humans have invented and told stories about monsters to…
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The origins of pediatrics as a clinical and academic specialty in the United States
Colin PhoonNew York, USA In the long timeline of medicine, pediatrics is a recent clinical field. The first children’s hospital in the world was established in Paris in 1802, followed by the Hospital for Sick Children on Great Ormond Street in London in 1852.1 Rightfully so, many ascribe the birth of American pediatrics to the…
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The resident
Sarah de ForestChicago, Illinois, USA He is a handsome man, no one can deny it, and he has a pleasant smile. In this terrible place, its inhabitants ravaged by hunger and disease, he always looks as though he just came from the barber, and his men know that slovenliness or disorder is the surest way…
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Why did Darwin drop out of medical school?
Richard Brown and Thalia Garvock-de MontbrunHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Erasmus Alvey (Ras) Darwin, the elder brother of Charles Darwin, completed six months of hospital training in Edinburgh in 1825–1826 and then went to London to study at the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy.1,7 Charles Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1825–1827 and then…
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The color of organ markets
Howsikan KugathasanToronto, Ontario, Canada Nawaraj Pariyar from Nepal is promised thirty thousand dollars for “a piece of meat” that will grow back. Only later does he find out that he was duped twice. He received less than 1% of his promised money and that piece of meat was not any ordinary flesh: it was his…
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Six years and counting
Libanos ReddaSeattle, Washington, United States For the past six years, I have not been myself. Then again, the memory of my former self has grown a bit foggy over the years. Perhaps things were always this bad. Perhaps I have not changed much at all. Around six years ago, at the age of seventeen, my…
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Bugs and people: When epidemics change history
Salvatore MangionePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In a November 15, 2016 lecture at Oxford University Union, famed British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking predicted that mankind will not last more than a thousand years, and that the only way it can escape extinction is by finding another planet. In May 2017 he moved up the deadline to a…
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Seeing things differently: A reflection on clinical photography
Michaela ClarkCape Town, South Africa Looking into the face of a patient is a necessary part of the clinical experience. Yet despite the physical proximity achieved in the doctor’s office, on the operating table, or in the petri dish, it is only when patients are perceived as legible objects that their bodies can be impartially…
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The disease you do not see
Aaron BerkowitzNew York, New York, USA You look normal, good even. Statistically you are bigger, stronger than billions of people alive (and those who have died). You learn to repeat mantras to affirm your being. There is power in prayer when action is impossible. You cry more too, beg. You force yourself to write, to…