Year: 2022
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A series of messages
Fung Kam YanHong Kong It was a Sunday. I sat outside the ward in my white coat, my eye protection fogging up, trying to catch my breath through the KF94 mask. My grandmother was inside, also struggling to breathe. The nurse said that only two visitors were allowed because of COVID-19 restrictions. It did not…
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Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape
Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and lips, has breasts, a navel, and pubic hair. Such was typical of the work of this great in…
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Palo Seco: A leper colony in Panama
Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland Park, Kansas The history of leprosy goes back to antiquity and is replete with unscientific prejudices, including the belief that the disease was highly contagious. Therefore, lepers were ostracized from society. It was not until the nineteenth century that Armauer Hansen (1841–1912), a Norwegian physician versed in histopathology, published in 1874 his findings…
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The adenoid riots of 1906
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden On June 28, 1906, thousands of Eastern European Jewish women surrounded and attacked twelve public schools in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.1 The community where they lived was an “unbearably crowded, unhealthy, and impoverished urban neighborhood.”2 The Danish-American photographer, journalist, and social reformer Jacob Riis wrote that “nowhere in the world…
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Faith in medicine
Tyler BeauchampAugusta, Georgia, United States When I was in college, I worked for a nursing unit in the trauma ward. One patient had been in a horrible car accident and barely survived. I visited her for the better part of two weeks before she began to improve. One afternoon, as I was passing by her…
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The Joys of Motherhood: The classic Nigerian novel
Oyenike IlakaAlbany, New York The Joys of Motherhood is a Nigerian novel written by Buchi Emecheta in 1979. Emecheta was a Nigerian woman from the Igbo tribe. Born in 1944, she spent her childhood in Lagos. At sixteen, she married and immigrated to London, where she discovered her passion for writing. Unfortunately, her husband was…
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Diocles of Carystus
Diocles of Carystus (probably 375–300 BC), also known as Diocles Medicus, came from the island of Euboea but is remembered as a resident of Athens. He wrote on animal anatomy, dietetics, physiology, embryology, and medical botany, but only fragments of his writings survive. His work on anatomy may have been the first of its kind…
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O Child! My Child!
Alice RanjanRedmond, Washington, USA O Child! My Child!Enter did you, into this world,incarnadine and warm.But when I held you in my arms,you did not shriek or love or scorn.Nay, you took the pathfrom mother’s bloodto River Styxin evanescent breath.How I wish you could have stayed with meto see the world beyond. You will not see…
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Wandering lonely as a cloud
Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, US I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin…
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Healer of the pharaohs: History’s first woman doctor
Matthew TurnerWashington, US Some 4500 years ago, as the great pyramids rose above the desert sands of Egypt, there lived a remarkable woman. Her name was Peseshet, and she is humanity’s first known woman physician. Peseshet was known by the title imy-r swnwt, which roughly translates to “Lady Overseer of the Lady Physicians.”1 She was…