Month: June 2020
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The death of Zachary Taylor: The first presidential assassination or a bad bowl of cherries?
Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States Zachary Taylor was a true Southerner born into a prominent family of plantation owners in Orange County, Virginia, on November 24, 1784, During his childhood his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky. In 1808 he obtained a commission as a first lieutenant in the army. In 1810 he married Margaret…
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Heartbreak in the nursery
Shruthi RavishankarChennai, India I began the long drive to the pediatric hospital on a route peppered with traffic jams and incessant honking. Some of my medical school classmates simply do not attend the rotation, but I always make it a point to go. It is fun to see the smiling babies and their proud mothers…
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The two nightingales
Inga LewenhauptEinar PermanStockholm, Sweden Two remarkable women were born in the same year two centuries ago: Jenny Lind (1820-1887) and Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). Both became world famous, Jenny Lind for her beautiful singing voice, Florence Nightingale for her pioneer work in nursing. Both were deeply religious and wanted to make the world a better place,…
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Cinema MD: A History of Medicine on Screen
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in his lab in Wurzburg and the Lumiere brothers demonstrated cinema in Paris. X-rays revolutionized medical practice by enabling doctors to see inside the body for the first time without resorting to surgery. Cinema, also a form of image production, revolutionized entertainment in the twentieth…
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Women in the medical profession: The trial of Jacoba Felicie de Almania
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States In November 1322 a group of folk healers and empirics were put on trial by the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Paris. Their crime was practicing medicine without licenses issued by the university. The punishment was excommunication and a fine of sixty Parisian livres.1 Among the group was…
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Rheumatic fever: Evolution of causal concepts and management
Amogh BJTrivandrum, Kerala, India Nanditha VenkatesanRaipur, Chhattisgarh, India For centuries rheumatic fever (RF) and its sequelae scourged the lives of millions of people. Despite a substantial decline in deaths from the disease, rheumatic heart disease remains a problem, especially in areas of poverty. Over the past few centuries, a growing understanding of its causation and…
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Tu Youyou, discoverer of artemisinin for resistant malaria
The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou received the 2011 Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating a chemical agent to be used in the treatment of resistant malaria. Born in 1930, Tu came from a distinguished family of scholars; studied at the University of Beijing; and early…
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Satoru Nakamoto
Of all the pioneers who made hemodialysis a reality, Satoru Nakamoto was the most humble and unassuming. He died in 2020 at the age of 92, almost forgotten by a generation that often takes the technical advances of dialysis for granted and rarely looks back on the people who made it possible. I had the…
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Benjamin Rush—Heritage and hope
C. Frederick KittleChicago, Illinois, United States Excerpted from the The Proceedings of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, Vol. 34, 1981. Based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Alumni Association of Rush Medical College, September 13, 1976. Reprinted from Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s “Magazine,” Winter 1976–77. In his biographies it is stated simply:…