Month: May 2019
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“Let the people see what I’ve seen”: beauty, suffering, and learning to see
John Eberly Raleigh, North Carolina, United States John Brewer Eberly, Jr. “Study on seeing, 2007.” Personal collection. Charles Stegeman, professor of fine arts at Haverford College, once took up the task of teaching medical students how to draw. He did so because he observed that students who learned to draw well went on to…
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More than “toil and trouble”: Macbeth and medicine
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States The Witches. Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien). 1510. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The image of a woman – a witch — working over a bubbling cauldron filled with stomach-turning substances is a staple of both horror and more family friendly media. One such example is Shakespeare’s…
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The future of medicine
Hannah Wilson Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Photo by Hannah Wilson “Nobody can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. … Morpheus: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain,” Neo, The Matrix, 1999. Tomorrow was…
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Medicine, musically
Willem Blois Halifax, Nova Scotia Robert Pope, Visitors (1989) “This painting is like a psychological ecosystem, where the worlds of healthy and sick meet.” (Pope 1991) I sat on the piano bench, head down, staring at the space between middle C and the key above it. I could see my teacher out of the…
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Revisiting the history of kuru
Tanzila SaiyedChernivtsi, Ukraine An eleven year old girl named Kigea had gradually become unsteady on her feet. She had pain in her arms, joints, and legs, and would cry and scream. She had fits of uncontrollable laughter and shaking. She belonged to the tribe of Fore (pronounced as FOR-AY) of the village called Waisa in…
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Understanding and combatting ageism in healthcare
Dane Wanniarachige Dublin, Ireland “Their last hand to hold” by Emily Nguyen. February 22, 2019. As I waited for the tram on a windy day in Dublin, I noticed an older man wearing a flat cap shuffling unhurriedly towards the busy platform with a noticeable parkinsonian gait. The tram slowed to a halt and…
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John Calvin: his rule in Geneva and his many illnesses
At the age of twenty-three the great French religious reformer abandoned his Catholic faith, becoming in time the founder of one of the most important branches of Protestantism. During his life he wrote numerous tracts on various aspects of religion, notably emphasizing predestination and the supremacy of the Trinity, and advocating a simpler and more…
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Lorenzo Costa: A painting for services rendered?
Giovanni Battista Fiera was born in Mantua in 1465. He studied at the University of Pavia, from where he graduated in 1485 with a degree in medicine, but extended his interests to poetry, philosophy, and theology. Moving to Rome after graduation, he published there in 1490 one of the first books on dietetics, La Coena…
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Medical doctors in the army of India
Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Fig.1. Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India. “The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.” – Thomas Campbell India, like many other countries, has doctors serving in the army as well as tertiary care hospitals that provide medical services to the armed forces personnel. It also…
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Pharmaceutical marketing in America
Adil Menon Ali Mchaourab Cleveland, Ohio, United States A Pharmacy for Every Need (plate 24). Charles Émile Jacque. 1843. The Art Institute of Chicago. Within the past few decades, there has been a great change in how the pharmaceutical industry markets its products in the United States. Prices of medical drugs have skyrocketed as…