Month: March 2023
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Can headless martyrs really walk? The belief in cephalophores in the Middle Ages
Andrew Wodrich Washington, DC Saint Denis of Paris holding his severed head. Mid-15th century depiction from an illuminated prayer book (Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 5, fol. 35v, 84.ML.723.35v). The halos surrounding his decapitated head as well as the stump of his neck suggest that the soul and saintliness of St. Denis remain in…
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Ruggero Oddi: Brilliant physician and victim of gaslighting by the Congo Free State
Eli Ehrenpreis Skokie, Illinois, United States Ruggero Oddi in 1900 during his post as acting director of the Physiological Institute of Genoa. Referenced in Alexander Rollett Letter Edition, L.2629. When Ruggero Oddi (1864–1913) was a medical student at the University of Bologna, he performed studies detailing the physiology of the biliary sphincter. This work…
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A brief history of ulcerative colitis
Parnita Kesar South Carolina, United States Anatomy of the large intestine in ancient Chinese medicine, 1537. Wellcome Collection. The symptoms of ulcerative colitis have been documented since the eighteenth century. From 1745, there is evidence that Prince Charles, the Young Pretender to the English crown, had symptoms consistent with the condition we now know…
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Abraham de Balmes ben Meir, Jewish Italian physician and polymath
Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel Abraham de Balmes ben Meir (c. 1460–1523) was a Jewish physician and polymath from the baroque Italian city of Lecce in the south of Italy, where his grandfather had served as personal physician to King Ferdinand I of Naples. He studied medicine in Naples but left in 1510 when…
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King Wamba’s poisoning with cytisine
Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Wamba Renouncing the Crown. Juan Antonio de Ribera, oil on canvas, 1819. Museo del Prado. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In AD 409, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Suevi and the Vandals (of Germanic stock) and the Alans (of Asian origin). The Visigoths came next. They…
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Conflict about the clitoris: Colombo versus Fallopio
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”– Oscar Wilde The clitoris, a female genital structure anatomically homologous to the penis, was known to the ancients. In 540 BC, the Greek Hipponax made one of the earliest references to it. It was not mentioned by Hippocrates,1 but Arabic, Persian, and Roman writers…
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Books, bangles, and bravado
Jill Kar New Delhi, India Figure 1. Anandi Gopal Joshi (March 31, 1865 – February 26, 1887). Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Anandibai Joshee (Anandi) set sail from India at the age of eighteen. Bartering her bangles for books, she traded convention for an education, which was considered shameful in nineteenth-century India.1 In doing so,…
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A time to live and a time to die
Amera Hassan Minneapolis, Minnesota Photo by Gaspar Zaldo on Pexels. “Well to be honest, doc, I don’t quite care whether I do live or die.” He said it so nonchalantly and he was smiling too, a crow-footed wrinkle on either side of his eyes. When this patient was first admitted to the floor, he…
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Sea sick: Naval surgery and sanitation in eighteenth-century Britain
Melissa Yeo Ontario, Canada Instruments in a Surgeon’s Chest (click to enlarge). From The surgeons mate or military and domestique surgery, John Woodall, 1639. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Scurvy, yellow fever, and typhus were considered “the three Great Killers of seamen.”1 Hygiene and diet were very poor aboard eighteenth-century sailing vessels, as ships were often…