Month: November 2023
-
Anatomy and psychology in George Stubbs’ portrait of Joseph Banks
Stephen MartinThailandAidan JonesUnited Kingdom Medical investigation techniques applied to art history1 can help solve mysteries, as illustrated by a striking, late eighteenth-century portrait2 (Fig 1) recently acquired for an educational exhibition.3 Its history had been forgotten, but it was identified as an inheritance portrait by its dirty, dog-eared parchment property titles in legal pink ribbon.4…
-
The history of scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a highly contagious infectious disease that probably has existed for thousands of years. Ancient texts from China and other parts of the world have described symptoms resembling those of scarlet fever. In the 5th century BC, Hippocrates documented a patient with a reddened skin and fever. Centuries later, in 1553, the Sicilian…
-
The medical history of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was the fortieth president of the United States and the fifth to be shot at by a would-be assassin. On March 30, 1981, a deranged young man, John Hinckley Jr., fired six bullets at him outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. One bullet struck his chest, ricocheted off his left seventh rib, and…
-
The “Republic of Letters” and Jacob Spon
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The European intellectual community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was interested in establishing a metaphysical “Republic of Letters” (Res Publica Litterarum or Res Publica Literaria).1-2 It was to be “a great and swirling progression of learning”3 such as that in ancient Greece and function as a network of scholars…
-
Hieronymus Gaubius
Born in Germany near Heidelberg as the son of a cloth merchant, Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705–1780) was one of the many students of the renowned Herman Boerhaave. He became his immediate successor and like him had studied medicine in the Netherlands at the University of Harderwijk, which charged low fees but did not have a…
-
The smell of dystopia: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It’s a sad commentary on our age that we find Dystopias a lot easier to believe in than Utopias: Utopias we can only imagine, Dystopias we’ve already had.”—Margaret Atwood Brave New World1 is a science fiction novel about a high-tech, controlling dystopia. It is clearly a satire. Nineteen Eighty-Four2 is a story…
-
My second birthday—or date to die?
Laura ClaridgeSaugerties, New York, United States I was relieved when the date arrived, and my husband, Dennis, moved me into my next month’s home on the eighth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering, where we both marveled at the difference between this unit and neuro-oncology, one floor below. No noise, no voices reverberated off the walls;…
-
John Ruhräh, poliomyelitis pioneer and medical historian
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “The best sailors are those who have studied the charts and records of those who have sailed before.” – John Ruhräh John Ruhräh was a pediatrician and medical historian born to German parents in Chillicothe, Ohio, on September 26, 1872. After completing medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons…
-
Samuel Auguste Andre David Tissot (1728–1797)
JMS PearceHull, England The Swiss physician Samuel Auguste Andre David Tissot (1728–1797)*1,2 (Fig 1) spent his professional life in Lausanne, despite tempting offers made by the royalties of Poland and England. He developed into one of the most influential physicians of the Age of Enlightenment: an advocate of rational medicine as opposed to the prevailing…