Month: April 2023
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Robert Hooke and Micrographia
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Cells in cork tree bark. From Hooke’s Micrographia via the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is perhaps rash to attempt to appraise the work of Robert Hooke (1635–1703), but renewed attention is merited to a great scientist whose contribution to medicine and science has not been adequately acknowledged. Robert Hooke…
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Fritz Mainzer and the Jewish Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt
Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel Dr. Fritz Mainzer. In La Voix Juive; Organe Independant Du Judaïsme Intégral, September 22, 1932, page 3. From the collection of the National Library of Israel, courtesy of The Jewish Press in Arab Lands section. In 1961, Dr. Fritz Mainzer (1897–1961) was invited to lecture at a medical congress…
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Blake’s autonomous newborn: Neonatal mortality in “Infant Joy” and “Infant Sorrow”
Zoya Gurm Detroit, Michigan, United States Virgin and Child. Artwork by William Blake, 1825. Yale Center for British Art Paul Mellon Collection. Public domain. William Blake (1757–1827) was an artist, poet, and progenitor of the Romantic era. Romanticism represents the artistic and intellectual movement responding to the Enlightenment, industrialization, and political revolutions of the…
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Breaking Bad: A case study of antisocial personality disorders
Jason Liu San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States Both psychopathy and the non-clinical “sociopathy”1 have been diagnosed in infamous serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Gacy, and popular films and TV shows, like American Psycho and Dexter, have drawn from these diagnoses. Psychopathy and sociopathy are amongst the most complex mental…
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Seasick: Lessons in human anatomy from Hyman Bloom’s The Hull (1952)
Liz Irvin Worcester, Massachusetts, United States The Hull. Oil on canvas by Hyman Bloom, 1952. Image reproduction courtesy of the Hyman Bloom Estate. “I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead…
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The art of war and medicine
Xinxin Wu Omaha, Nebraska, United States Hai Wan Wu on Lunar New Year 2003 wearing a traditional tangzhuang. War and medicine are two vastly different fields, yet they share a common goal. In war, soldiers risk their lives to defend their country; in medicine, healthcare professionals work to heal the sick and prevent illness.…
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Florence Nightingale
Abigail RichardsonSheffield, UK Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the British nurse who became known as the “Lady with the Lamp,” is remembered for her work during the Crimean War and as a statistician and public health advocate.1 Her lifelong dedication to nursing led to her being the first female Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (1858) and…
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Scrofula or the king’s evil
Left: Scrofula. Photo from the Atlas of Clinical Medicine. US National Library of Medicine. Right: Queen Mary I healing scrofula. Illustration by Levina Teerlinc in Queen Mary’s manual for blessing cramp rings and touching for Evil. Via Wikimedia. Scrofula, the old name for tuberculous lymphadenitis of neck, was once a common condition. The name was…
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For debate: Presents from patients
Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland It was Christmas Day in Guy’s Hospital, London. Two months into my first house-physician post, I was completing a morning round with the staff nurse on my female ward. At the far end of the open ward was a bed with closed curtains. A small face peered round them with increasing frequency…
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Santa Margherita da Cortona
Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States From humble beginnings to years as a mistress, Margherita altered her path to become a tertiary Franciscan penitent, attending the ill and poor, founding a hospital, and devoting herself to Christ. She was in the vanguard of several other women of the late Middle Ages…