Month: November 2018
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El garrotillo: On diphtheria and Goya
Vicent RodillaValencia, Spain Diphtheria is a bacterial infectious disease caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae that affects mostly children. Although by 2017 some 85% of infants worldwide have been vaccinated for DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis), some 19.9 million children remain unvaccinated.1 According to the World Health Organization, reported cases of diphtheria have decreased from nearly 100,000 in 1980 to…
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Francesco Antommarchi, the Malvolio of St. Helena
Francesco Carlo Antommarchi (1780–1838) was a man of dubious character who served as Napoleon’s physician on the island of St. Helena from 1818 until his death in 1821. He began his education in Livorno, Italy, then in Pisa and Florence, graduating with a degree in surgery in 1812. For the next six years he practiced…
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Johannes Purkinje: physiologist with wide interests
Johannes Purkinje (1787 –1869) was one of the best-known scientists of his time, now remembered for discovering, in 1837, the large neurons with branching dendrites of the cerebellum (Purkinje cells), and the fibers conducting electrical impulses from the atria to the ventricles of the heart (Purkinje fibers). In addition, he introduced into medicine the terms plasma and protoplasm, and was the first…
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Kinnier Wilson
Samuel Kinnier Wilson (1878-1937), one of the greatest neurologists of the first half of the twentieth century, described in 1912 under the title “progressive lenticular degeneration” what became known as “Wilson’s disease.” Born in New Jersey to a Scottish mother and an Irish missionary Presbyterian minister, he went to Scotland for his education, graduated from…
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Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) 1516–1558
During her relatively short life, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon had a rough time. After her mother’s marriage was annulled, she was not allowed to see her and was declared illegitimate. Her father would have nothing to do with her and once even threatened to execute her if she did not…
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Seventeenth century obstetric illustrations
Around the middle of seventeenth century man-midwifes or accoucheurs began to revolutionize the practice of obstetrics by reforming education, introducing scientific principles, and developing safe rules for the conduct of the delivery and the use of the forceps. Foremost among this new brand of practitioners were two Scotsmen, William Smellie and his one-time student William…
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Islamic medicine
During the expansion of the Empire of Islam and its ensuing Golden Age, physicians from Spain to Samarkand advanced the medical sciences by reviving existing Greek medicine and adding their own innovations.1 There were many prominent physicians, dating back to the days of the Prophet himself. Often associated with hospitals or schools of pharmacy, some…
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Nicolo Paganini—a case of mercury poisoning?
Nicolo Paganini, the greatest violin virtuoso ever, was born in the Republic of Genoa in 1782. At age five he learned to play the mandolin and at seven the violin. When his city was invaded by the French Revolutionary Army in 1796, his family fled the city but later returned, and by age eighteen, Paganini…
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Combat hospital chaplain
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States “Chaps, how would you like the opportunity to leave your family and your church for a year?” I asked over the phone in an almost gleeful tone. “Jack, if the question was not coming from you, I would think your question was a joke.” I had served with this…