Month: May 2024
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Optography: Recorded on the retina
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.”– Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004), French photographer The discovery in 1876 that certain cells in the retina change color on exposure to light intensified the comparison of the human eye to a camera. The retina was no longer thought of as merely a membrane, but rather a screen, or…
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Dr. Monty Perl—Pioneering Australian venereologist
Michael AbramsonMelbourne, Australia Mathias Michal (known as Monty) Perl was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 6 January 1873, the first son and second child of Michael Mathias Perl and Miriam (Mary) Davis. His father had arrived in Port Phillip aboard the Arabian in 1853 and established a successful business as a general merchant, wholesale…
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Eugène J. Woillez (1811–1882)
Eugène Woillez was born in the town of Montreuil sur Mer, near Calais, in 1811, one year before Napoleon committed the colossal error of invading Russia. As a young man, Woillez studied the sciences and arts, and spent his leisure painting with watercolors, playing musical instruments, and dabbling in lithography under the pseudonym Ozelli (his…
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The legacy of Armand Trousseau
JMS PearceHull, England “Every science touches art at some points—every art has its scientific side; the worst man of science is he who is never an artist, and the worst artist is he who is never a man of science.”– Armand Trousseau Trousseau’s sign is familiar to medical students as the carpopedal spasm caused by…
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Nonsense poetry
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently, I read the Israeli professor Rony Reich’s translation of German nonsense poetry (Deutsche Unsinnpoesie), and among them, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Lügenmärchen (Lying Fairy Tales). I translate from the Hebrew: …Three wished to catch a hare,On crutches they came—a team.One was deaf,The second blind, the third mute.And the fourth could…
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The two doctors Bigelow from New England
Students of eighteenth-century history are familiar with the two great prime ministers of England, William Pitt the Elder and William Pitt the Younger. Medical historians, however, may be more interested in the two Boston physicians, Jacob and Henry Bigelow, also father and son, who in a way eclipsed one another by attaining a great reputation…
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Why did the chickens refuse to eat before the Roman defeat at Deprana (249 BC)?
Andrew N. WilliamsLeicester, England The Roman defeat by Carthage during the First Punic War at the naval battle of Deprana (or Drepanum, modern Trapani) is also remembered for its preceding event of the refusal of the sacred chickens onboard the Roman flagship to eat. Witnessing this unfavourable omen, the Roman commander and consul Publius Claudius…
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Ming the clam: Methodical measurement of the maturity of the Methuselah of mollusks
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Clams don’t carry birth certificates.”– Samantha Larson, National Geographic1 The maximum human lifespan is about 120 years, and research continues to find ways to increase that maximum. Knowing the maximum lifespan of other species and how they manage to achieve it may be of value. Zoologists have two strict criteria when defining…
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Living behind a mask (Is it being one’s self?)
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States In my retirement in Lincoln, I have found myself looking back at life. Those memories brought me smiles, but that is not what I want to share now. It is the memories that did not bring smiles. It is the memories of embarrassment and remorse after regretful behavior. And because…