Month: March 2019
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Louis XIV and his ailments
Introduction For over 300 years King Louis XIV has occupied a special place in the heart of every Frenchman. He brought glory to his country, extended its boundaries, and promoted the arts and letters so that French culture became second to none in Europe. For many decades his neighbors trembled at the sound of his…
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Bigger than a black box
Valeri Lantz-Gefroh Texas, United States Teaching in very different classrooms – at the National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and dozens of top medical schools, hospitals, and universities. I am an actor, director, and acting teacher. And my theater is a medical school in Texas. “Wait, what?” My life in the last…
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Resolution
Gaetan Sgro Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Looking Back: Vietnam War Memorial by Ann Stuurman. 2002. Windfield Photographic Collection, Ontario Canada. noun 1. an expression of will or intent; a commitment In June 1965, Edward White, one of two astronauts aboard the Gemini IV mission, becomes the first American to walk in space. He floats…
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Sign Gene: The first deaf superhero film
Paul DakinNorth London, United Kingdom If the superhero genre really is “about transformation, about identity, about difference,”1 then the description can readily be applied to Sign Gene, the world’s first deaf superhero film. Written and directed by Emilio Insolera, who was born deaf to deaf parents, this “unlikely cult classic”2 is a sci-fi thriller in…
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The language game of medicine
Gunjan Sharma Devon, United Kingdom Photo by Ludomił on Unsplash “The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein1 The Language Game Language is a fascinating concept when viewed through a philosophical lens. Imagine if we no longer had a word for jealousy. Would that…
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Gifts of gratitude
Henry Bair Palo Alto, California, United States Christ sits at the bedside of Jairus’s sickening daughter. Etching after G.C. von. Max. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. “It’s for you,” the old man said when his niece tried to hand Dr. Alba the large wrapped package. It was a gesture I was familiar with, though Dr.…
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A column of volcanic sand
David Gullette Boston, Massachusetts, United States The original all-concrete BioSand Filters we made for many years. 330 lbs without its sand. Why shouldn’t a retired English professor devote himself to Public Health? I fell hard for Nicaragua in the 1980s, organizing Boston academics against Contra aid, visiting the country in 1986 with Father Steve…
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Michelangelo’s David and the anatomical politics of religious art
Sam ShusterWoodbridge, Suffolk It is impossible to see Michelangelo’s David without marvelling at the way its power and humanity have been fashioned from coarse stone. Apart from its living warmth, there is a unique display of human anatomy, each feature of which stands out in perfection, and together make an image that can be looked…
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Un-impostering
Brianna Rossiter Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Children Playing with a Mask by John Smith. After Balthazar van Lemens. 1703. Philadelphia Museum of Art. We stood surrounding her tiny body in the hospital bed. Her shallow breaths were splinted by pain as we watched, myself and four second-year, male medical students. Her breath would catch and…
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Lessons learned from the Greeks: The physician-patient relationship in Hippocratic Gynecology
Jenna NickasNew Brunswick, NJ, USA The medical treatment of women in Classical Greece was a topic not overlooked by the Hippocratic tradition. Much of the Corpus addresses the health of women, especially Epidemics and Diseases of Women. Within this genre two things are certain: all patients were female and all doctors were male. Many clinical…