Month: April 2022
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A tangled web: Stealing newborns in twentieth-century Spain
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “We were Europe’s baby supermarket and babies were stolen for sixty years.”1— Inés Madrigal Twentieth-century Spain was a politically unstable, highly divided nation. In 1931, King Alfonso XIII abdicated after the results of elections were interpreted as a plebiscite on abolishing the monarchy.2 What followed was “one weak government after another.”3 In…
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s bondage of opium
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom His grace, his God-knows-what: for Cupid’s cupWith the first draught intoxicates apace,A quintessential laudanum or ‘black drop,’This makes one drunk at once, … — Byron’s Don Juan (1823) The opium or breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum) was native to Turkey and was known to ancient Assyrian herbalists. Theophrastus described it in the…
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Stay inside: A toast to the frontline
Tyler BeauchampRushay AmarathAndy NguyenAugusta, Georgia, United States The COVID-19 pandemic introduced us to a danger we knew little of how to protect ourselves from. I had spent the last four years fighting for the chance to become a physician, and now, in March 2020, I found myself useless to help. My parents were doing everything…
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Book review: Civilization and the Culture of Science
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The word civilization has both Latin and French origins: civitas (city) and civis (citizen) in Latin, and civilise (civilized) in French. In 1923, physician, philosopher, and theologian Albert Schweitzer wrote in The Philosophy of Civilization that “Civilization was essentially the sum total of all progress made by man in every…
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The emergency room doctor
Rob OttesenVero Beach, Florida, United States If you were to ask me, I like to have a glazed doughnut before I go to sleep because the sugar in the doughnut inhibits my body’s production of orexin, a neuropeptide, thereby ensuring a peaceful slumber. I also like the taste of the doughnut and the warm and fuzzy…
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“Can you define the word ‘woman’?”
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States “The more you know the more you realize you don’t know.”— Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE) On March 22, 2022, a US senator asked the nominee for Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court: “Can you define the word woman?” The nominee replied, “I can’t.” The senator followed up with,…
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The flower lady
Jonathan B. FerriniLa Jolla, California, United States Photos by author. The Flores Family Flower Shop was founded by my grandfather as a roadside stand. It has now been a favorite flower shop in San Diego for the past fifty years. Six days a week at 4:30 in the morning, I drive the truck to the…
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Movie review: Kings Row—Assassins in white coats
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Above all, I must not play God.”—Revised Hippocratic Oath2 Kings Row (1942) is a film set in a small American town in the early nineteen-hundreds. It features two doctors who are best avoided as well as a bright young man called Parris sent by his wealthy grandmother to study medicine in Vienna.…
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The pineal: Seat of the soul
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom The pineal for millennia had been a structure of mystery. In Ancient Egyptian culture, The Eye of Horus was a sign of prosperity and protection, often referred to as the third eye. In Ayurvedic physiology it corresponds to the sixth chakra—Ajna, located in the middle of the forehead, representing intelligence,…
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Miscarriage: A medical student in a rural clinic, Central America, 1977
Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Elena sits perched on a gurney with claret-stained thighs. She has just miscarried in the clinic’s lavatory. She inquires of the gender of the fetus, and hands twitching and heart flapping, I blurt, unexpectedly and duplicitously (for I could not know), “Una bebita.” A little girl. A guttural sob…