Healing in the face of cultural devastation
Patrick Flynn Los Angeles, California, United States Portrait of Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree. Source. In 1855, a young Crow boy, no more than ten years old, ventured to the top of a mountain in present-day Montana. Over the next two decades, the boy would rise […]
Maligning Macleod and “Bettering” Best: the discovery of insulin as depicted in film before Michael Bliss
James R. Wright Jr. Calgary, Alberta, Canada JJR Macleod circa 1928. Credit: University of Toronto. Via Wikimedia. In 1921, Fred Banting and Charley Best, working under the supervision of JJR Macleod, made crude pancreatic extracts from duct-ligated dog, fetal bovine, or whole adult bovine pancreata and used these to treat diabetes in depancreatized dogs. […]
Doctor in exile
Constance Markey Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of Carlo Levi. By Carl Van Vechten, photographer (created/published: 1947 June 4) (Wikipedia.org) In August of 1935, a handcuffed Dr. Carlo Levi, (1902-1975), author of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, (Christ Stopped at Eboli) arrived in the miserable southern Italian village of Gagliano (actually, Aliano).1 He […]
The Lewis and Clark Expedition: medical ethics in uncharted territory
David Blitzer New York, New York, United States Alvise Guariento Toronto, Ontario, Canada Robert M. Sade Charleston, South Carolina, United States Detail of “Lewis & Clark at Three Forks,” mural in lobby of Montana House of Representatives. Mural by Edgar Samuel Paxson. Via Wikimedia In 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with the backing of […]
The death of King George V
Seamus O’Mahony London, England Fig 1: Lord Dawson of Penn. Photograph by D. Wilding. Wellcome Collection. Copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London. Public Domain. Bertrand Dawson, Lord Dawson of Penn (1864-1945), was the most eminent British doctor in the years between the two world wars. He was both a skilled medical politician (twice president of the […]
Improving health and saving lives: the unusual relationship of religion on sports and health
Ira D. Glick Danielle Kamis Stanford, California, United States Neil Eisenberg San Francisco, California, United States With permission of the Int Society of Sport Psychiatry Religion has always had a powerful effect on culture. As such, it is surprising that there has been scant literature on the effect of religious beliefs and teachings on […]
“Troubled in my eyes”: The risks of reading and writing
Katherine Harvey London, England, United Kingdom A medieval miniature showing St Mark reading a book and holding spectacles to his eyes. From Jean Poyer, The Tilliot Hours (c. 1500), The British Library. On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half […]
The talented Dr. Cotton and other quacks
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of Henry Andrews Cotton from Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1924. Via Wikimedia. Over the centuries there has been a surfeit of talented medical quacks in all parts of the world. The word “quack,” indeed, is derived from the archaic Dutch word “quacksalver,” meaning “boaster who […]
Death, disease, and discrimination during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914)
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas, United States Theodore Roosevelt, portrait, ca. 1904, Wikipedia Commons, public domain. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1858-1919) President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned an interoceanic canal as indispensable for American “dominance at the seas.”1 An isthmian canal would facilitate rapid deployment of U.S. Navy ships from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans, bypassing the arduous […]
A very Victorian drug
Anita Cooke New Brunswick, Canada Elizabeth Siddal Plaiting her Hair by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Tate Gallery London. Date unknown. Photo © Tate. CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0. On February 14, 1862, the Daily News reported the “Death of a Lady from an Overdose of Laudanum.”1 Four nights earlier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had discovered his wife, Lizzie, in […]