Year: 2023
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The periodic table of the elements
In this system hydrogen is assigned the number one, lithium is three, carbon six, nitrogen seven, oxygen eight, etc. The elements are organized in rows or periods and columns or groups according to their atomic weight. The elements were discovered beginning in the 18th century when the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen (1772),…
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William Murrell and nitroglycerin
Born in London in 1853, William Murrell was the first to use nitroglycerin in the treatment of angina pectoris. Son of a barrister, he received his medical training at the University College Hospital in London and then taught physiology there. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Royal College…
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“Filth so foul and stench so offensive as not to be imagined”
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia … during the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water,…
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David Macbride: On scurvy and the art of tanning
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel David Macbride (1726–1778) of the county of Antrim, Northern Ireland, was an Irish physician who contributed to the treatment of scurvy1 and to the art of tanning.2 In his youth, he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and served for a short time as a surgeon’s mate on a Navy hospital…
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Sporozoites: The elusive assassins
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Almost 5,000 years ago, the Chinese described a disease that presented with intermittent fevers, enlarged spleens, and a predilection to epidemics. Those malarial infections were possibly caused by Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) since P. malariae is unlikely to cause epidemics. The Chinese did not mention mortality following these symptoms; therefore,…
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Somerset Maugham on studying medicine (abstracted and in parts paraphrased from Of Human Bondage)
In 1897 Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) qualified as a physician but never practiced medicine and became a full-time writer.1 In his 1915 novel Of Human Bondage he drew on his experiences at St. Thomas’s Hospital to describe what it was like to be a medical student at that time. He first has his young protagonist practice…
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Martin Chuzzlewitt by Charles Dickens
Although Charles Dickens called Martin Chuzzlewitt immeasurably the best of his stories, it was at first unsuccessful and even caused him to have his pay cut. Suspenseful and gripping, with murders and poisonings, Martin Chuzzlewitt takes place at a time when hospitals were largely places where the poor went to die1; the wealthy were treated…
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Pregnancy and art
Bojana CokićZajecar, Serbia Pregnancy, the beginning of a new life, was historically uncommon in art. The shape of a pregnant woman does not conform to classical Greek ideals of the female figure, which may have contributed to this rarity. Over time, misconceptions about this necessary, natural phenomenon have changed, and pregnancy has become more common…
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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…