Year: 2018
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Pedanius Dioscorides: The first encyclopedia of plants and drugs
Pedanius Dioscorides (c.29-90 AD) lived in the time of the notorious Roman Emperor Nero and is believed to have traveled widely with his armies, which gave him an opportunity to study and collect a wide variety of medicinal plants. Born in the town of Anazarbius, in what now is southern Turkey close to the Syrian…
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Celiac disease, Areteus, and Samuel Gee
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which eating gluten proteins damages the villi of the small intestine causing food malabsorbion. It was described around the first part of the second century A.D. by Aretaeus of Cappadocia as a state in which the food is not broken down in the stomach but passes on undigested and…
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Five Untitled Poems
Simon PerchikEast Hampton, New York, United States * Slowly the glass, half filled, halfmelting down for a slippernot yet hardened into light is flickering the way a moonstill sets itself on firethen changes into taking its time and you become an old womanwith a cane, around and aroundas if this rim at last remembers overflows…
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William Alexander Hammond
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom In much of the nineteenth century, ”internal medicine” dominated medical practice in the United States. Specialism was widely disdained and faced hostility and scepticism,i, not least from the influential Sir William Osler: There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases…
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History of nephrology vignettes
Hippocrates: “Those whose urine is merely blood-stained have suffered in the veins. When urine is thick, and there are passed with it small pieces of flesh like hair, you must know that these symptoms result from the kidneys and arthritic complaints.” Bubbles appearing on the surface of the urine indicate disease of the kidneys and…
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Otto Kahler, Bence Jones, and multiple myeloma
Dr. Otto Kahler (1849-1893) was inducted into the pantheon of eponymy for reporting in 1889 the details of a patient suffering from multiple myeloma. Born and educated in Prague, Kahler became a professor of medicine in his home town, but in 1889 moved to a similar professorial position in Vienna. Influenced during a sabbatical in…
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The art of surgery: “Surgical theatrics” on the surgeon’s stage
Cynthia AvilaChicago, Illinois, United States Sorry indeed should I be, to sport with the life of a fellow-creature who might repose a confidence either in my surgical knowledge or in my humanity; and I should be equally disposed to consider myself culpable, if I did not make every possible effort to save a person whose…
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The ligament of Vaclav Treitz
Vaclav Treitz (1819–1872) was born in Bohemia, studied humanities at the Charles University in Prague, and obtained his medical degree there in 1846. He then furthered his education at the New or Second Vienna School under the great luminaries of the time, Karl Rokitansky, Joseph Skoda, and Ferdinand von Hebra. He specifically worked in anatomy…
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Erasistratus
Erasistratus (304–250 BC) founded a school of anatomy in Alexandria, where he described the valves of the heart; concluded that the heart functioned as a pump; and distinguished between arteries and veins. He believed that the arteries were full of air and that they carried the “animal spirit”; appears to have almost discovered the circulation of the blood; and carried…
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High blood pressure and the kidney: the forgotten contribution of William Senhouse Kirkes
Excerpt from: “High blood pressure and the kidney: The forgotten contribution of William Senhouse Kirkes” by J. Stewart Cameron and Jackie Hicks The realization of the key role for raised intra-arterial pressure as a pathogenetic agent in hypertension is usually credited to Ludwig Traube. But Traube in his writings gives credit for the idea to a…