Month: March 2020
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Destination
J Rush PierceLakewood, CO, United States It must have started some time before, but I was unaware of it on that pleasant September day, hiking in the rocky foothills of northern New Mexico with my daughter. Arriving back at the trailhead by late afternoon, we shucked our packs into my SUV and paused for a…
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Engage the emotions
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Captivated by the paintings of Caravaggio, I search for them wherever I travel. But no encounter has been as intense and personal as The Taking of Christ in the Beit wing of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. The Taking of Christ depicts the moment of Jesus’s betrayal by…
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The bullet in Garibaldi’s ankle
Giuseppe Garibaldi will forever be remembered as the greatest hero of the Italian risorgimento and struggle for independence. Even today there is no city in Italy, large or small, that has not raised a statue in his honor. He had been popular even before Italian unification, throughout Europe and especially in England. Had he not…
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A birth remembered
F. Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Memory is to old age as presbyopia (far-sightedness) is to eyesight. Presbyopia makes you lose the ability to see clearly at a normal near working distance while maintaining a sharp distant vision. Just so the elderly recollect in painstaking detail what happened to them fifty or sixty years ago, yet…
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The bubonic plague in Eyam
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom In medicine most instances of outstanding acts of heroic human courage relate to individual patients or to their attendant doctors, nurses, and caregivers. Here is a unique example of the collective self-sacrifice of a tiny rural community, which probably saved the lives of thousands. The year is 1665. The Great…
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Epidemics from plague to Coronavirus
Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States Throughout history humanity has faced many epidemics and pandemics that caused panic and massive casualties. Although in modern times pathogens have shifted from bacteria to viruses, each new epidemic brings back fears of diseases from the past such as bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, and leprosy. Society has usually responded to…
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Ferdinand Sauerbruch, father of thoracic surgery
Annabelle SlingerlandLeon LacquetLeiden, the Netherlands Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951) was one of the most important thoracic surgeons of the first half of the twentieth century, remembered for pioneering a method that would allow access to the thoracic cavity and the heart. Three years after his death in 1954, his life was detailed in a movie authored…
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The death of King George II
In November 1760, the King of Great Britain rose early as was his custom and drank his habitual cup of chocolate. He then went to use his commode on wheels, and minutes later was discovered slumped on the floor, dead. The next day his physician, Frank Nicholls, “opened the body” and found the king had…
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Danse of the virus
S.E.S. MedinaBenbrook, Texas, United States It is born with tens of thousands of identical brothers and sisters when the thin-walled, transparent, fatty bubble of their nurturing womb suddenly bursts—releasing them into the tumultuary rapids of the host’s bloodstream. It possesses no sense of self, no manner of consciousness—even in the most rudimentary way. It lacks…