Month: June 2020
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All too human: The mountain gorillas of Uganda
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The Ugandan mountain gorilla is a member of the Hominidae family, also known as the great Apes. The extant species include: the orangutan, the eastern and western gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo, and ourselves—Homo sapiens. The mountain gorilla is one of two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. The one…
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Ernest Henry Starling and the birth of English Physiology
JMS Pearce Hull, England Science has only one language, quantity, and only one argument, the experiment-EH Starling Ernest Henry Starling (1866-1927) (Fig 1) was an outstanding figure in the development of physiology whose prolific contributions made him one of the foremost scientists of his time. He was born on 17 April 1866 at 2 Barnsbury Square,…
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Reflections on time long gone by
John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States The author of this delightful book, Dr. John Raffensperger, is a retired surgeon who entered medical school in 1949. His book presents a stark contrast between how medicine was practiced then and how it is now. It highlights the many changes, mostly good but some bad, that have taken…
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Being our best selves: hidden in full view
James StollerPeter ReaAlan KolpCleveland, Ohio, United States We live in a paradox framed by a tension between age-old wisdom about excellence and our current state. The paradox is this: our behaviors and our priorities are often at odds with age-old truths about how we can be our best selves. This paradox—that these truths are widely…
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John Francis Hall-Edwards—a radiology pioneer
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK John Francis Hall-Edwards was born on 19 December 1858 in the Kings Norton area of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He was educated at King Edwards School in Birmingham followed by Queen’s College, Birmingham where he studied medicine and was an apprentice to Professor Richard Norris.1,2 He qualified in medicine in 1885. Norris…
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Good patient, good doctor
Lealani Mae AcostaNashville, Tennessee, United States What makes a “good” patient? What makes a “good” doctor? I am a cognitive behavioral neurologist who specializes in dementia. I relish the longitudinal relationship I have with patients and appreciate hearing them say with pride, “Dr. Acosta is MY doctor.” Being someone’s physician means having a personal relationship,…
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Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain
Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…
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Belding Scribner and his arteriovenous Teflon shunt
Without Belding Scribner maintenance dialysis might have never happened. Although by 1960 the technology of hemodialysis had become quite advanced, and several types of dialyzers, notably the Kolff Twin Coil, had been successfully used, long-term access to the vascular system was still not available. The choice for the physician was to cut down on peripheral…
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Tracing wisps of hair
Miriam RosenPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was fourteen. For the next nine years, she lived her life with elegance and seemed to do it with ease. She continued her psychiatry practice, only gradually reducing the number of patients she saw. She read the New York Times cover to…