Month: June 2026
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Kumbhakarna, a sleeping giant: A medico-mythological exploration
B. Sadananda NaikMoodabidri, India Kumbhakarna, a gigantic brother of the legendary demon king Ravana, is depicted as one of the most powerful warriors in the Indian epic the Ramayana.1 Kumbhakarna became famous for his extraordinary sleep and enormous appetite. According to Hindu mythology, due to a divine twist during a boon-granting ceremony, he was cursed…
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Beyond the fingerstick
Allison WangCalifornia, United States I was working the afternoon shift when, after three hours of walking under the sun, I was finally assigned to the blood sugar testing station. The days were long—eight-hour shifts that began at five in the morning as we drove into rural villages of Vietnam. I felt a quiet sense of…
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The death of Emperor Caesar Augustus
Augustus’s death in CE 14 ended one of the most remarkable lives in Roman history. Born Gaius Octavius in 63 BCE, he was adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar as his son and chief heir. After Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, he formed an alliance with Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, hunted down Caesar’s…
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Max Thorek: An ignored surgical superstar
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Much of what we know about Dr. Max Thorek is from his informative and eminently readable autobiography A Surgeon’s World, which is sprinkled with entertaining and enlightening vignettes.1 Max Thorek (1880–1960) was born in a town in the Tátra mountains on the Austro-Hungarian border. His father was a physician and…
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Proust’s medical madeleine: Medicine and the making of À la recherche du temps perdu
Vivian McAlisterLondon, Ontario, Canada Marcel Proust was expected to waste his life. To acquaintances of the Proust family, he appeared charming, delicate, over-refined, and incapacitated by an illness that seemed to excuse him from the ordinary obligations of career and usefulness. Valentine Thomson, remembering the household, called the young Marcel “a charming but fantastic idler.”…