Month: January 2022
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Wilhelm Baum (1799–1883)
Wilhelm Baum. Photograph of painting by Wilhelm Title. Uploaded by Mehlauge. Via Wikimedia. Postgraduate medical education in the nineteenth century required personal contact with the masters of the profession – working and rounding with them, or at least listening to their lectures. Thus the German surgeon Wilhelm Baum spent one year after obtaining his doctorate…
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Musical evenings on HMS Bounty
Stewart Justman Missoula, Montana, United States The mutineers turning Bligh and his crew from the Bounty, 29th April 1789. Illustration by Robert Dodd. 1790. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Dispatched to Tahiti in 1787 to gather breadfruit trees to be transplanted to the West Indies, HMS Bounty was a small ship with every possible…
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The Queen’s quickening: The phantom pregnancies of Mary I
Eve Elliot Dublin, Ireland Portrait of Queen Mary I of England by Anthonis Mor, 1554. Prado Museum, Madrid Spain. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In November 1554, the people of England believed a miracle had taken place. Resplendent on her new throne, Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, proudly revealed that she was with…
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The illness of King George III
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Farmer George & his wife. Published by William Holland. 1786. © The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The Hanoverian King George III (1738–1820) was a diligent man of wit and intelligence, a man who enhanced the reputation of the British monarchy until he…
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“Between false modesty … and conceit” – Sir Roger Bannister
Jack E. Riggs David B. Watson Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Statue of Roger Bannister (left) and John Landy (right) at moment Bannister took the lead in their race on August 7, 1954. Statue by Jack Harman, 1967. Photo by Paul Joseph, 2005. Via Wikimedia. CC BY 2.0. Give me one moment in time…
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The Great War and the other war
Maryline Alhajj Beirut, Lebanon Starving man and children in Mount Lebanon. 1915–1918. Unknown photographer. Via Wikimedia. Public domain due to age. The reverberations of October 29, 1914 would carry throughout the lands of the Ottoman Empire and serve as an ominous premonition of disastrous years to come. On that day, following a surprise…
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The “Ne-Uro” mess
Nishitha Bujala Hyderabad, Telangana, India Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash When I took my oral exams in the final year of medical school, I was tested on surgical instruments by an external professor. He appeared to be in his sixties and stern. As a conversation starter, he asked my favorite specialty. “Neurology,” I…
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Hope
Rima Nasser Beirut, Lebanon Cedar tree of Lebanon. Originally located atop the police and investigative branch building in Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut. Photo by an anonymous photographer. 2021. Private collection. Modified from the original by Rima Nasser. Published with permission. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not an incendiary rant about…