Month: October 2021
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Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Portrait of Joseph Haydn. by Thomas Hardy. 1791. Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments. Via Wikimedia. For nearly half of his life Joseph Haydn occupied the humble position of musician in the service of the Esterhazy princes, wearing livery and playing his wonderful compositions while the guests at dinner most likely only half- listened…
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Edward Lear
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Lear by Wilhelm Marstrand 1840 NPG 3055 [public domain] How pleasant to know Mr Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer But a few think him pleasant enough. Edward Lear 1879 Hundreds of famous people from every branch of…
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The good, the bad, and the regrettable
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “Man . . . cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.” — Frederick Nietzsche Lab coat and scrubs. Photo by Samir. 2006. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. What follows is a description of different aspects of…
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“Am not I a fly like thee?” Drosophila melanogaster and the human genome
Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States A fruit fly displaying its large red eye. Among Thomas Hunt Morgan’s many contribution to the burgeoning science of genetics, he observed some male fruit flies had a mutant white eye. By cross-breeding males with mutant white eyes with females with the dominant trait and, subsequently,…
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Maligning Macleod and “Bettering” Best: the discovery of insulin as depicted in film before Michael Bliss
James R. Wright Jr. Calgary, Alberta, Canada JJR Macleod circa 1928. Credit: University of Toronto. Via Wikimedia. In 1921, Fred Banting and Charley Best, working under the supervision of JJR Macleod, made crude pancreatic extracts from duct-ligated dog, fetal bovine, or whole adult bovine pancreata and used these to treat diabetes in depancreatized dogs.…
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Joseph Škoda (1805–1881)
Joseph Skoda. Charcoal drawing by Berger, 1883, after A. F. Baschta.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark Medicine in Vienna developed in two distinct phases.1-3 The first began in 1745 when Empress Maria Theresa on the advice of Herman Boerhaave4 invited Gerard van Swieten5 to become her personal physician. She also appointed him in charge of medical education,…
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On the way to school
Mary Jumbelic Syracuse, New York, United States Illustration by Joshua Jumbles. Published with permission. A thin line of blood oozed from a shallow cut in the skin, like the first stroke of an artist’s brush on a blank canvas. The second and third incisions intersected the first to form a large Y-shape. Sanguinous fluid…
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Sacrifice
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Ruins of the basilica of St. Achillios, Lake Prespa, Greece. Photo by the author. The supine and inert feminine form has been reduced to a few square centimeters of uncovered skin between the jaw and the sternum. Strategically placed green surgical drapes shroud the rest of the body. A series…