Month: July 2020
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Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
JMS PearceEngland, UK Second only to his Mona Lisa, the most famous drawing in the world of art is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl. He was named after his birthplace Vinci (at Anchiano) near Florence. He became a painter, draftsman, sculptor,…
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Use of masks to control the spread of infection: more than a century of confusion
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States Johann von Mickulicz-Radecki (1850-1905) was an ardent advocate of the one-time novel concept of aseptic surgery. To improve his results, he began working with a hygienist and bacteriologist, Carl Flugge (1847-1923), who pointed out possible sources of infection for the surgical patient, including droplets dispersed from the nose and mouth…
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Sir Victor Horsley’s fatal blind spot
Faraze A. Niazi Jack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Sir Victor Horsley. Photograph by G.C. Beresford. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind. -Robert Oxton Bolton Sir Victor Horsley is generally regarded as the…
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Using Latin to settle medical pronunciation debates
Raymond Noonan Brooklyn, New York, United States Author’s note: Original Latin words are written in italics, with macrons (ā) indicating long vowels. Equivalent Latin-derived medical terms are given without italics. Acute accents (á) are sometimes used to indicate stress accent in both English and Latin. Informal phonetic spelling that should be familiar to most…
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Great expectations
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Summer Calm—image by the author “Doctor, I want you to treat her as a forty-year old!” What is the appropriate answer to a demand like that from a daughter about the treatment of her eighty-eight-year-old mother? Any suggestion that her mother might not do well even with the best treatment…
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The art of nursing
Isabelle J. St. John Milwaukee, WI Cornelia Parker’s art piece appears as an explosion suspended in time, which effectively conveys how a nurse operates as an artist of care; nurses enter their patients’ lives at the moment of explosion, and they have the ability to suspend that explosion for a moment in time and…
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Deserving but unrecognized: the forty-first seat
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States The Nobel Prizes Each year on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish royal family recognize the individuals deemed to have made the greatest achievements in chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, and literature; and the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognizes “the person…
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The Bengal tiger: Panthera tigris tigris
James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States The Indian subcontinent for millennia provided the ideal “jungle” habitat for the tiger. When the first Europeans arrived in India the animal was ubiquitous. At the close of the nineteenth century, when Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, 100,000 tigers were thought to roam the subcontinent. By…
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Rudyard Kipling and the medical profession
George Dunea James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from the biography Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer. 1907. Accessed via Wikimedia Born in Bombay but educated in England, the great master of the English language did not return to India until he was seventeen years old in 1882. He worked for local newspapers in…
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John S. Bristowe: Victorian physician and polymath
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Photograph of John Syer Bristowe (1827–1895), English physician. G. Jerrard. 1895. Accessed via Wikimedia. John Syer Bristowe was a Victorian physician and polymath who served his alma mater, St. Thomas’ Hospital, with great distinction. He was born into a medical family on 19 June 1827 in Camberwell in Southeast…