Month: March 2023
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The night the emergency room staff vanished
Edward Tabor Bethesda, Maryland “333-365 Corridor.” Photo by Karen Mardahl on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. One of the strangest events of my medical career occurred on a spring evening in 1975. It was during one of my outpatient months as a pediatric resident at a large medical center in New York City. During the…
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Jaws and galeophobia
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”– Herman Melville, Moby Dick The 1975 thriller film, Jaws, takes place in a New England summer resort town. People flock to the beach, and two swimmers are killed by sharks. A marine biologist brought in to help find the killer thinks the swimmers were killed by…
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“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”: Who said it first?
Robert Schell Brooklyn, New York Biblical inspiration: Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple (or The Purification of the Temple). El Greco, c. 1600, Frick Collection. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In these days of rampant biomedical commercialization, the Bible-inspired admonition “No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”…
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George Redmayne Murray and “myxœdema”
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Note on treatment of myxedema. BMJ 2:796-797 via the James Lind Library. The transformation from myxedema to normal health is one of the most satisfying experiences for patient and physician that medicine has to offer. Yet until the end of the nineteenth century, the function of the thyroid…