Category: Asia
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Return to Lebanon
Elie Najjar Nottingham, United Kingdom View of Lebanon from an airplane window. Photo by Elie Najjar. “Dear passengers, we will be arriving soon at Beirut International Airport.” We had indeed arrived in Lebanon, the land also called Leb-Uh-Nunh and other names before that. Mesopotamians called it Chaddum Elum or “the fields of God.”1 The…
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Abhay Sadhak (fearless seeker): Baba Amte
Utkarsh G. Hingmire Nagpur, India Baba Amte. This file is a copyrighted work of the Government of India, licensed under the Government Open Data License – India (GODL). Via Wikimedia. Murlidhar Devidas Amte, affectionately known as Baba Amte, was a lawyer who left his lucrative legal career to devote his life to the treatment of…
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History of medicine in ancient India
Keerthana Kalla Seattle, Washington, United States Shushrut Statue In Patanjali Yogpeeth, Haridwar. Photo by Alokprasad. 2009. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. The chronicle of medicine is the story of man’s struggle against illness. As early as 5000 BC, India developed a comprehensive form of healing called Ayurveda. Such traditional healing was first recorded between…
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The Bengal tiger: Panthera tigris tigris
James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States The Indian subcontinent for millennia provided the ideal “jungle” habitat for the tiger. When the first Europeans arrived in India the animal was ubiquitous. At the close of the nineteenth century, when Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, 100,000 tigers were thought to roam the subcontinent. By…
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A plastic surgeon’s weeks in lockdown
Neha Chauhan Bangalore, Karnataka, India As I tuned in to the announcement on March 24th, 2020 that India would be completely locked down for next three weeks to flatten the curve of coronavirus spread, my heart skipped a beat and then almost sank. I spent a sleepless night trying to understand my reaction of…
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Gandhiji on Indianness of health and healthcare (1869–1948)
Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India In 2019, 150 years after Mahatma Gandhiji’s birth, India celebrates his birthday to honor his legacy and his contributions to the welfare of this nation. We remember him with his alluring smile, in loin cloth, shawl, and thin-framed glasses, his attire representing his message to lead a simple…
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Medical doctors in the army of India
Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Fig.1. Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India. “The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.” – Thomas Campbell India, like many other countries, has doctors serving in the army as well as tertiary care hospitals that provide medical services to the armed forces personnel. It also…
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Of honors lost and honor regained: Indian origin of plastic surgery
Neha Chauhan Karnataka, India Figure 1: A singular operation. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) “A skilful dissembler may disguise in a degree, the expression of mouth, the hat may be slouched over the eyes and the chin may be hidden in the impenetrable thicket of beard but the nose will…
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The curse of the blessing
Medha Pande Nainital, India Photo by Pradeep Pande For the wedding of a second cousin, I visited my ancestral village for the first time at the age of twenty-five. The tiny hamlet is in a quaint, expansive valley in the middle Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. The once prosperous region is struggling under the pressure…