Month: October 2020
-
Walter Russell Brain DM FRCP FRS (1895–1966)
JMS Pearce East Yorks, England Lord Brain. From The Royal London Hospital. Source Russell Brain (Fig 1) was born at Clovelly, Denmark Road, Reading, on 23 October 1895, the only son of Walter John Brain, solicitor, and his wife, Edith Alice. A quiet, reserved man of enormous intellect and integrity, he was revered as…
-
The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore
Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States Obelisk over Hodgkin grave site in Jaffa, Israel. Moses Montefiore, on his return to England, purchased a column of Aberdeen granite nine feet tall and had it inscribed with a lengthy tribute to Hodgkin “as a mark of my respect and esteem.” It was transported to…
-
Jack London’s cloudy crystal ball
Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode Island, United States The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London. Open Library, an initiative of the Internet Archive. The COVID-19 pandemic has given quarantined readers new opportunities to discover the literature of plagues and epidemics. Many people—in order to give context to the present pandemic—have turned to books like Albert Camus’…
-
Revisiting the “Trolley Problem” in the COVID-19 pandemic
Margaret B. Mitchell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Graham M. Attipoe Nashville, Tennessee, United States Bridge situation. John Holbo. 2010. CC BY-NC 2.0. Via Flickr The “Trolley Problem” Originally described by Philipa Foot in 1967, the “Trolley Problem” is an ethical dilemma commonly taught in philosophy that challenges participants to explore how far they would…
-
Salernitan women
Vicent Rodilla Alicia López-Castellano Valencia, Spain Figure 1. A miniature from Avicenna’s Canon representing the Salernitan Medical School. Source The first medical school in the Western world is thought to be the Schola Medica Salernitana (Figure 1), which traces its origins to the dispensary of an early medieval monastery.1 The medical school at Salerno…
-
Theme
ART AND MEDICINE IN FLORENCE Published in October, 2020 H E K T O R A M A . BRONZINO AND THE WAGES OF SIN Artists, statesmen, scholars, warriors, and even popes were affected by syphilis in those times. Take King Francis I of France (1494–1547). A polished man,…