Month: January 2024
-
Healing: A word that connects or separates patients from their doctors
Fergus ShanahanCork, Ireland “He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.”James Joyce (Finnegans Wake, 482)1 In Brian Friel’s play Faith Healer, Francis “Frank” Hardy has self-doubts.2 Is his power to heal diminishing? Is it real, autosuggestion, or chance? Does it require faith? People who come to see Frank are desperate, but whether they…
-
Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932), physician and educator
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932) was “one of the most conspicuous figures in American medicine,” rembered for developing the doctrine of focal infection from bacteria of the Streptococcus pneumococcus group via the teeth, tonsils, and other portals.1-3 Born in Wisconsin, he worked as a young man as a farmer and schoolmaster before…
-
Louis Jolyon West, M.D.: A dangerous doctor
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”– The Nuremburg Code, Section on Permissible Human Experiments (1946)1 Louis J. West, M.D. (1924–1999), was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor immigrant family. He enlisted in the US Army during World War Two, was sent to medical school at the…
-
Italy’s Lady of the Cells: Rita Levi-Montalcini
JMS PearceHull, England Rita Levi-Montalcini began her scientific career as an oppressed Jewess in fascist Italy. She ended it in triumph as the neurobiologist who discovered nerve growth factor, a political activist, and a researcher until her death at the age of 103.1 Born in Turin in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini was raised by an authoritarian…
-
Thomas Wakley (1795–1862) and The Lancet
When in April 1820 five members of a radical group plotted to murder the British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, they were sentenced to be hanged as well as publicly decapitated and dissected. An unknown man wearing a mask appeared in the square and carried out the task with such speed and dexterity that people thought…
-
Saving the starving Soviets with Spam
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands.”1– Nikita Khrushchev In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. The “breadbasket” agricultural regions of Southern Russia and the Ukraine were quickly occupied, causing a food crisis for the USSR. Russian soldiers’ food rations consisted…
-
Jeremy Bentham: Dead but not gone
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “How little service soever it may have been in my power to render to mankind during my lifetime, I shall at least be not altogether useless after my death.”1– Jeremy Bentham The English polymath Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. His collected works started to be assembled in…
-
John Keats statue
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England John Keats, born in London in 1795, is one of the finest Romantic poets of the English language. He died at the age of twenty-five in Rome, where he had gone to recover from tuberculosis. The house where he spent the last years of his life, at the base of the…
-
The forgotten menace of long naval patrols
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia Heavy manual labor was part and parcel of the daily routine on eighteenth-century sailing ships. Although simple mechanical aids such as capstans (winches), blocks, and pulleys reduced some of the burden, shipboard life relied largely on enormous physical strain and exertion. Lifting heavy casks, or tubs of seawater for washing the…
-
What caused Offenbach’s death?
Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Born in Cologne in 1819, Jakob Eberst (Jacques) Offenbach showed early musical talent. His father taught him to play the violin when he was six years old, and at the age of nine, he began to play the cello. At fourteen, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatory directed…