Month: June 2018
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Jules Dejerine
Jules Dejerine originated in Savoy and grew up in the then provincial atmosphere of Geneva, where his father was a carriage proprietor… Young Dejerine had a powerful physique. At the Lycée Calvin he was better known for his swimming and boxing then for his devotion to study…. Nevertheless, he did well in school…left for Paris…
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Multiple [disseminated] sclerosis
“Disseminated sclerosis was described pathologically in the 1830s by Cruveilhier in Paris and Carswell in London, but clinical accounts were sketchy. It was known only to the cognoscenti and regarded as a great rarity. Charcot was the first to diagnose the disease during life, and from 1860 onwards Charcot and Vulpian, and later Charcot…
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Death from uremia
“Your grandmother is doomed,” [the doctor] said to me. “It is a stroke brought on by uremia. In itself, uremia is not necessarily fatal, but this case seems to me hopeless. I need not tell you that I hope I am mistaken.” [Then] there was a moment when the uremic trouble affected her eyes. For…
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The most loathsome disease of the emperor Galerius
“His disease was occasioned by a very painful lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers, and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects who have given the name to a most loathsome disease.” — Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman…
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Why not let her go gently into that good night?
Victoria Lim Iowa City, Iowa, United States Old woman dozing (1656) Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) One early morning I was paged to see an eighty-five-year-old patient in the dialysis unit with low blood pressure. I learned that she had diabetes, hypertension, and diffuse atherosclerosis. In the past decade she had undergone four major surgeries for…
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Arthur Conan Doyle and the romance of medicine
Michael Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Sir Arthur Conan Doyle For medical professionals devoted to good literature, Dr. (later Sir) Arthur Conan Doyle is a source of possessive pride. He is someone like them, a physician with the interests of a polymath and the creative sensibility of an artist. And yet this cannot…
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Through the Magic Door with Conan Doyle
“Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books.” — William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury You are invited, gentle reader, to walk through the magic door and step into the library. Smoking is allowed, says your host, as he invites you to sit on the green settee from “where…