Month: July 2018
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Starvation as metaphor
Michael Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The mystery of FoodIncreased till I abjured itAnd dine without Like God— Emily Dickinson Susan Sontag’s 1978 essay Illness as Metaphor,1 published in serial form in The New York Review of Books, was a cultural event that continues to stimulate reflection and analysis forty years later. Based on an examination…
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The elimination game
Kelley YuanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Xylophone ribs and sunken cheeks. A body desperate for food paired with a mind determined to starve. Here lies anorexia nervosa’s cruel paradox, of a body betrayed and a brain allowing it to waste away. The protest anorexic patients put up against eating, even as they lose hair and muscle, speaks…
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The morning ritual
Peter H. BerczellerDordogne, France Years ago, I heard the adage: “When you get up in the morning, and you don’t see your name in the Times obituaries, you’re good for another day.” I was young then, with no understanding of the seriousness beneath this seemingly witty remark. As a medicine resident, I was no stranger to…
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Negotiation
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, USA “We appreciate what you Americans have done for us in the past. But we will not allow you to come into our hospital uniformed and armed.” It was their country, their hospital, and their rules. She was the hospital administrator, a woman in a Muslim country but clearly the unchallenged…
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Gluttony: rise, fall, and resurgence of a capital sin
F. Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States The notion of gluttony (gula in Latin, meaning throat, gullet) was born among the Desert Fathers. These were hermits who in the early Middle Ages chose to live in a harsh environment and in solitude, conditions they deemed most suitable for mystical contemplation. Among them, the monk Evagrius Ponticus (345-399…
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“Our daily bread”—The scourge of pellagra
Meera LadwaLondon, England, United Kingdom In the northern Italian town of Ferrara hangs a little-known painting by Giuseppe Mentessi (1857–1931). Surrounded by a field of maize, a woman carries her exhausted child in her arms, her eyes downcast with suffering. Behind this painting lies a story of medicine, food, economics, and culture—the story of pellagra,…
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Two feasts of celebration: Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party
Wilson F. Engel, IIIGilbert, Arizona, USA The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s now-famous mixed-media installation in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, was an intentionally shocking feminist statement in the late 1970s. Chicago’s work was anticipated in important respects in an unorthodox altarpiece The Garden of Earthly…
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Dr. John Wall and Royal Worcester porcelain
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom At first thought, the making of pots, china and porcelain would seem remote from the practice of Medicine. But one notable, exceptional man was accomplished and original in both. The polymath, Dr John Wall (1708 – 1776) of Worcester, though far from deserting Medicine, could perhaps be considered an example…
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Hope
Evgeniya LarionovaCharlestown, Massachusetts, United States She, brought in by ambulance, that winter dayThe tiny snowflakes peacefully falling their blind wayBroken, betrayed; Fresh track marks on her arms…“Will I never get saved from doing self-harm?”From the abyss of hell she never felt kindnessShe left AMA… How to end stigma in this crisis? We met again one…