Month: July 2022
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Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom This work is a timely and important contribution to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc worldwide. Following the cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, things would never be the same again. In this book, the author has…
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Franz Liszt and Lisztomania: “Le concert, c’est moi”
Elizabeth ColledgeJacksonville, Florida, United States Much has been written about the hysteria accompanying Beatlemania, and before that, the frenzies generated by Elvis, Sinatra, and similar artists, primarily musicians. But before the Beatles, before Elvis, before Frank, there was Franz Liszt, whose 1844 concert in Berlin shocked the musical world and generated the term and medical…
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Dr. Doyen separates conjoined twins in 1902
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.”– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Eugène Louis Doyen, M.D. (1859–1916), was an internationally known Parisian surgeon. He was a “skilled and innovative physician,”1 famous for his dexterity and the speed of his operations.2 He wrote a…
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Allowing my death—a delusory end-of-life decision
Wolfgang LedererInnsbruck, Austria Together with the gift of life, I have received its finiteness, its perishability. As death is inescapable, when might I allow my life to end? Certainly, my life expectancy has to be longer than average, and I demand good physical and mental health right down to the last minute. Furthermore, my life…
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Henry Miller
JMS PearceHull, England There are many eminent figures in the worlds of medicine and neurology, most of them distinguished by their clinical skill, academic prowess, scientific originality, or success in establishing major institutes of teaching and research. Henry Miller (1913–1976), though not a laboratory investigator, was blessed with many of these attributes, but beyond that…
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Walter Edward Dandy
JMS PearceHull, England In the history of American neurosurgery, two names stand out from the rest: Harvey Cushing (1869–1939) and Walter Edward Dandy (1886–1946). Sadly, they were inveterate rivals. Dandy was undoubtedly a brilliant pioneer of both neurosurgical research and practice. He was born in in a small house on 5th Street, Sedalia, Missouri, an…
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Movie review: Première Année (The Freshmen)
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Never memorize something you can look up.” – Albert Einstein“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill Première Année (literally “First Year”) is a 2018 French film. In it, we meet and follow two young men in their first year of medical school. Benjamin, like most of his classmates, enters…
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The tomato in medicine and the Bloody Mary
The tomato first grew on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in present-day Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, where it was neither cultivated nor eaten but perhaps used as a flavoring agent. It was transplanted in the early sixteenth century to southern Europe by the Spanish conquistadors of Hernán Cortés. In Italy, it was first…
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Rapid testing for the masses
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ten young girls are queueing outside the makeshift surgery. They are between eleven and fifteen, they wear face masks, they giggle and tease each other and try to encourage the timid ones before the coming ordeal. What is this going to be? Their first visit to a gynecologist? Nothing so memorable. They…