Month: April 2022
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Andersonville, Georgia and Elmira, New York: When Hell was on Earth
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” — Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy Andersonville Prison, Georgia. South end view of the stockade, showing the sentry stands in the distance. Photographed by A.J. Riddle, August 17, 1864. Library of Congress Liljenquist Family Collection. No known restrictions on publication. Elmira Prison, Elmira,…
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It could be bad
Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States The doctor poked and probed and prodded and pinched and rubbed his chin and clicked his pen and rose from his stool and breathed a groan, “Something is wrong, and it could be bad, is plausibly bad, is certainly bad, but not cancer bad, but bad heart bad, and…
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Spoilsports
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece The weekly grand rounds was the central educational event at the big teaching hospital. Everybody who could get away from clinical duties, regardless of specialty, attended the Tuesday lunchtime event at which we aspired to present our interesting or puzzling patients, or earn brownie points by hitting the obscure diagnosis that had…
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The vulnerability of love
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On Thanksgiving Day, I watch my niece Jenn with her seven-month-old daughter Laila playing on the living room floor. Jenn’s gaze has never left Laila despite the commotion nearby made by family who are setting the table for dinner, moving furniture to add additional chairs. The kitchen is lively. Utensils…
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The appendicitis conundrum
Jayant RadhakrishnanNathaniel KooDarien, Illinois, United States Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in the world. One would expect consensus regarding its management, but that has not been the case from the time the appendix was first identified. Galen (129–216 CE) was not permitted to dissect human bodies, so he dissected monkeys. Since…
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Tashima syndrome
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Let us now praise famous men.”— Ecclesiasticus 44:1 It has been a tradition in medicine to name a disease, a syndrome, a new treatment, or a surgical instrument after the person who describes it in the medical literature or invents it. Thus, we have Alzheimer’s disease, von Recklinghausen disease, Fanconi syndrome, Cornelia…
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William Wordsworth: “The blind poet”?
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He was the totemic father of the Lakeland poets, who extolled the relation between man and the natural world: a wedding between nature and the human mind that to him symbolized the mind of God. A prolific writer…
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The sixtieth anniversary of the “Battered Child Syndrome”
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden An intraparenchymal bleed with overlying skull fracture from abusive head trauma. May 29, 2016. James Heilman, MD, via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. “The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.” — Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist In 1962, Dr. C. Henry Kempe and colleagues at the…
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Traumatic experience and creativity: René Magritte
Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia A painter’s creativity often results from artistic inspiration, but it can also be a manifestation of fear, pain, and suffering. René Magritte (1898–1967), a Belgian painter and great figure in modern art, expressed his thoughts and his feelings on the canvas. His unique style and original ideas make him one of the…