Month: May 2021
-
Morris Fishbein, MD—foe of four-flushers, flimflammers, and fakes
Laura King Atlanta, Georgia, United States Morris Fishbein. Harris & Ewing, photographer. [ca. 1938]. Via Library of Congress Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 1889, and raised in Indianapolis, Morris Fishbein emerged from his humble origins as the second eldest of eight children born to a Jewish immigrant tin peddler (Benjamin…
-
Viktor Frankl: the meaning of a life
Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States Figure 1. Viktor Frankl, 1965. Photo by Prof. Dr. Franz Vesely via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. Not long before the Dachau concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, Viktor Emil Frankl was seriously ill with typhus and writing feverishly on stolen scraps of paper, determined to…
-
The patient who provided his own placebo and fully recovered
Lawrence Climo Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States Photo by Zach Lezniewicz on Unsplash My elderly patient began his treatment by complaining about how his mother had behaved towards him in his boyhood. She had hurt him with her name-calling and humiliating insults, and these had apparently resulted in a lifetime of a negativism towards her. He…
-
Tutorial for surgeons by Lawrence Peter Berra
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Since the turn of this century, and more so over the past decade, surgeons at various stages of their careers have been dissatisfied with their work and the surgical lifestyle. The main reason for their dissatisfaction seems to be an ever-increasing burden of administrative work, leaving them with little time…
-
Early lessons
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Virginia Emergency Room, image from “Historic VCU: A VCU Images Special Collection” VCU Libraries from Richmond, VA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Finally, it was my first day in a US hospital after studying medicine in Europe for five and a half years. A medical education at the…
-
St. Audrey Etheldrida
JMS Pearce Hull, England, UK Medicine is full of strange tales, some with unforeseen ramifications. I recently discovered that the origins of the useful word “tawdry” surprisingly lay in a tumor of the throat—nature unspecified—of a seventh-century saint. St. Audrey, Etheldrida, or Æþelðryþ, born c. 636 AD, was an English princess generally referred to…
-
Parental grief
Ellen Zhang Boston, Massachusetts, United States Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels We didn’t know the ending because this was us back then. Sometimes wanting is not enough. When the oncologist spoke. While you started to cry only because your mother did. As we cradled you gently. Beyond the singularity of such moments. There…
-
Bristol Children’s Hospital and esophageal atresia
Richard Spicer Bristol, United Kingdom Fig 1. Bristol Children’s Hospital 1885-2001. Photo by the author. Bristol Children’s Hospital The Children’s Hospital in Bristol began as the Free Institution for Diseases of Women and Children in 1857. In 1885 it moved to a purpose-built neo-Gothic building (Fig.1) and continued to treat women and children on…