Month: April 2018
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Looking glass land
Christy D. Di FrancesBoston, Massachusetts, USA I It begins the way stories often end: that excruciatingly one-sided conversation with some loved one or another. His grandmother. Finally something seems to awaken her from the obscurity of her world. “Do ye ken where he’s gone?”i She frames the question in a conspiratorial whisper, her eyes such…
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People or numbers: healing and efficiency
Damiano RondelliChicago, Illinois, United States In a rare text from 1793, the Italian physician Luigi Angeli instructed young doctors on how to approach a patient: “. . . once you questioned the patient about his disease, or the remote causes of this, and after you observed the quality of his temper, age, once clarified the…
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Distant memories of medical school – 1950–1954
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States How sweet the silent backward tracings!The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of oldtimes resumed—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.— Memories by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)1 It is now more than sixty years since I was in medical school (1950–1954). Most of the classes I attended and many of the people I came…
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Fighting the long defeat
John EberlyColumbia, South Carolina, United States “Together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”1 — J. R. R. Tolkien In May 1965, a fire started on the ground floor of the Sound Lumber Company in Arcata, California. Sparks spread quickly through the sawmill, engulfing the “cold deck,” a four million board-foot pile…
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Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Rayda JoomunMauritius To Deelshad Reezuana,The most beautiful Alice I met,May you rest in peace in Wonderland… “Thus grew the tale of Wonderland: / Thus slowly, one by one, / Its quaint events hammered out / And now the tale is done, / And home we steer, a merry crew, / Beneath the setting sun”¹ As a child, I got lost…
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Bob Edwards and the perils of publicity
James DrifeLeeds, United Kingdom The physiologist Robert Edwards began thinking about human in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1950s and first suggested it in print in 1965. Thirteen years later Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby, was born in Oldham, United Kingdom. Today that sequence of events seems logical, even inevitable, but it very nearly…
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The Brothers Grimm under the knife
Valerie GribbenSan Francisco, California, United States Magic-infused fairytales and modern medicine are intertwined as closely as the curving double helix of DNA. Do you doubt this? Well, let us start by acknowledging that the word “magic” has to a large degree regrettably lost its luster. “Magic” these days conjures up images of clowns pulling quarters…
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A change in mindset
Asayya ImayaLondon, United Kingdom “This is witchcraft,” my father said with authority. I had questions that I dared not ask; my father was a formidable and austere character. The terror he had instilled in me as a child was still palpable, and I still feared him as an adult. I am not sure I liked…
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The hypocrisy of the advice-giver
Kathryn TaylorSan Francisco, California, United States I do not floss daily. And I have poor sleep hygiene—I am always starting into the blue-light, back-lit screen before I go to bed. My vegetable intake is so-so. But now, as a newly minted primary care physician, I find myself in a peculiar place—I have become the presenter…
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Pitch dark
Ochiche IjeomaLagos, Nigeria I had observed many surgical operations as a medical student so I knew what to expect. The rules about changing clothes and footwear, the strict hand washing routine, the complex method of putting on the aprons, gowns, and gloves had been drummed into my ears and demonstrated countless times. I also knew…