Month: April 2018
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The history of diabetes and insulin
Anabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, Netherlands The discovery of insulin in 1921 by Banting, Best, Collip, and McLeod was heralded as the cure of diabetes (Figure 1). Press reports consigned earlier research to oblivion, suggesting that previous investigators had merely been groping in the dark. And yet this revolutionary discovery was preceded by legions of key figures…
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“Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I
Alice MacNeillOxford, United Kingdom Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?Ever from their hair and through their hand palmsMisery swelters.…
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Consultation
Edgar MillerBaltimore, Maryland, USA Rounds In the round The pale orange Cloud-like couches Filled with suits and ties And men Who sit in reserve Awaiting an opening to offer an opinion To rehash the old, Assure the current, Or, dialog the future, Uncertain course to take, for a progressive and unrelenting disease that in the…
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Upon viewing Félix Vallotton’s La Malade
Lois LeveenPortland, Oregon, United States The sick girl turns her back to meThe maid won’t meet my eyeThe near-bare walls hold one dim printThe chair sits crookedly The medicines are kept bedsideThe table can expandThat’s how we all know what’s unsaid—More medicines to come And yet the shock of salmon redCalls from the drab and…
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Enough
Laura LoertscherPortland, Oregon, United States The last food you ever ate was a cup of orange sherbet from the nurses’ station. I saw no reason to make you NPO. After all, you were eating for two. Did you know this would be your last meal? You came to the hospital on a late Friday afternoon,…
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Consider the nails of the hand, how they grow (William Bean)
In the days when the Archives of Internal Medicine was one of the greatest general medicals journal in America, William Bean was its famed editor. Born in 1909 in Manila, he had studied at the University of Charlottesville in Virginia, served in World War II, became professor of medicine in Iowa city, and during his…
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Henrik Ibsen’s diagnosis of the conscience
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the protagonist in Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, An Enemy of the People, thought he had finally landed the ideal position as physician for an idyllic Norwegian resort town. He was well-paid and well-connected; his brother was even the mayor. Life and livelihood centered on the public baths…
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Isidor Snapper: A colorful but tyrannical chief
The great professor of medicine with the Charles Boyer accent would make ward rounds followed by some thirty students living in constant fear of being publicly humiliated. “You,” he would say, “where do you come from?”—and wherever it was he would then pronounce that “in the country of the blind the one eyed man is…
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Pathology
Eden AlmasudeMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States Sipping Scotch and watching fava beansSpurt new life from the earthI ruminate:a dead man’s ribcage, mutilatedThe skin of his scalp,Limp without a skull beneathfor: science and medicine?Or curiosity?I smell the morgueIn sweat from my run and wonderhow he can rest in peacewhen his lungs are sliced,his brain in a bucket,tissue ready…
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Edward Jenner and the dairymaid
Smallpox has plagued mankind since time immemorial, causing huge epidemics with great loss of life and often changing the course of history. The disease could be prevented or ameliorated by variolation, the subcutaneous inoculation with fluid from smallpox lesions into non-immune individuals. Variolation had been used for centuries, even for members of royal families. It…