Month: August 2021
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Ephraim McDowell, father of ovariotomy
John Raffensperger Fort Meyers, Florida, United States Portrait of Ephraim McDowell. Unknown date, published before 1900. National Library of Medicine. In 1809, Jane Crawford’s physicians thought she had an overdue pregnancy and called Ephraim McDowell, who lived sixty miles away in Danville, Kentucky.1 McDowell diagnosed an ovarian tumor and advised surgery. McDowell had been born…
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The year gross anatomy faced the scalpel
Michael Denham New York, New York, United States An instructor uses Complete Anatomy, a virtual anatomy software, to illustrate sections of the chest. By Michael Denham. As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, anatomy departments across the United States struggled to develop contingency plans to continue training the country’s future physicians. Would this…
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Syndrome K and the Fatebenefratelli Hospital
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Giovanni Borromeo – Italian doctor – Righteous Among the Nations. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 “Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the whole world.” — Talmud (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)1 Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany and was required to enact anti-Semitic laws.2 Beginning in…
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The snake, the staff, and the healer
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Introduction In some ancient cultures, especially around the Near East, the snake was involved in healing. Today this seems counterintuitive. There are as many as 130,000 deaths from snake bites worldwide each year and three times that number of amputations and severe disabilities. Ophidiophobia is one of the more common phobias,…
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A brief history of menstruation
Fangzhou LuoPortland, Oregon, United States After a few failed attempts to redirect a flirtatious student to “higher pleasures” like music, the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Hypatia resorted to revealing where she was in her menstrual cycle to deter him. The philosopher who recorded this—Damascius—does not specify if this student was Orestes,1 who remained a…
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The man who hated hospital
Emeka Chibuikem V.Enugu State, Nigeria An emergency patient was in critical condition. The staff nurse on duty moved swiftly to attend to him. Then she went to the waiting hall to meet with the patient’s family and asked them why they had waited so long before bringing him to the hospital. They stared at her,…