Movie review: Where Does it Hurt?
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Peter Sellers in 1971. RR Auction. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “This film is dedicated to the honest, sincere MDs—whose lives are dedicated to the sacred Hippocratic oath. Will these three doctors please stand up?” This dedication sets the tone of Where Does It Hurt? (1972). Unlike the 1971 film […]
Understanding so little: Cinema and mass shootings
Eelco Wijdicks Rochester, Minnesota, United States Caleb Landry Jones in Nitram. IFC Films/Photofest. Used with permission. The horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, was serendipitously preceded by a trailer for Gangster Squad, which showed a fictitious shooting of a movie theater audience. Filmmakers have revisited the […]
Old dogs teach psychology
Simon Wein Petach Tikva, Israel The dog is a man’s best friend. Cats, horses, cows, rabbits, dolphins, and rarely goldfish are also good friends to humans, but none compare with the dog. In support of this contention, there are many wonderful books and films about dogs. The other animals, especially horses, are also the […]
Book review: How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain by Joseph Jebelli. The human brain has long been a source of wonder and a fascinating subject for study. Philosophers, scientists, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and medical scholars have spent lifetimes studying the brain and how […]
Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of How the NHS Coped with COVID-19 by Ellen Welch. This work is a timely and important contribution to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc worldwide. Following the cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, things […]
Book review: The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis Gets Us Wrong
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis Gets Us Wrong. Making the right diagnosis is central to the medical encounter. A doctor always started off by taking a history, examining the patient, and sometimes performing additional tests. But when a creditable diagnosis could not be made, the medical profession […]
Book review: Understanding the NHS
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Book cover of Understanding the NHS by Andy Stein, 2022. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom was founded in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, a Welsh Labour Party politician and health minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government. Bevan was a coal miner before entering Parliament in […]
A portrait of dementia
Lindsay Ripley Dallas, Texas, United States Photo by Thulfiqar Ali on Unsplash A few months ago, I watched The Father, a film with Olivia Colman in a main role and Anthony Hopkins as the titular father. Hopkins plays Anthony, a character who bears Hopkins’ own name because writer and director Florian Zeller wrote the […]
Book review: Civilization and the Culture of Science
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Civilization and the Culture of Science: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1795–1935 by Stephen Gaukroger. The word civilization has both Latin and French origins: civitas (city) and civis (citizen) in Latin, and civilise (civilized) in French. In 1923, physician, philosopher, and theologian Albert Schweitzer wrote […]
Movie review: Kings Row – assassins in white coats
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “Above all, I must not play God.” — Revised Hippocratic Oath2 Artificial limb factory in Rome: six women working at benches, one using a sewing machine, and one stitching the back of a full-length leg, used in reference to Drake’s fate in the film. Photo by Studio Leonardi, 1914. […]