Category: History Essays
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Dirty, dark, dangerous: Coal miners’ nystagmus
Ronald FishmanChicago, Illinois, United States It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,Where the danger is double and pleasures are fewWhere the rain never falls and the sun never shinesIt’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine. From the song “Dark as a Dungeon” – Merle Travis Nystagmus is a repetitive oscillation of the…
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Political obfuscation and medical speculation
Charles G. KelsSan Antonio, Texas, United States Politicians have long endeavored to keep their health concerns secret. In US presidential politics, the efforts of both incumbents and candidates to project vitality and minimize frailty have at times bordered on the surreal. In 1893, President Grover Cleveland underwent surgery for oral cancer on a private yacht…
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The history and mystery of cupping
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Maybe your chest hurts from coughing, or maybe your muscles ache. Maybe you feel sluggish and anxious, worn out, and not sure why. There is a treatment, some say, for all of that and more. If it is done right, you only walk away with bruises—perfect circles in shades of…
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Of luxuriant manes and in praise of baldness
Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States The feverish imagination of poets has ever eulogized the beauty of feminine hair. The beloved’s hair has been represented as golden threads, sunrays, fragrant flowers, or astrakhan fleece (wool famous for its tight, shiny loops). Richard Lovelace spoke of it as “sunlight wound up in ribbands.”1 To Charles Baudelaire, his…
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The X Club
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Charles Babbage, who conceived the first automatic digital computer, published in 1830 Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. This stimulated the formation of several new groups that aimed to further scientific progress and exchange of ideas. These were distinct from Britain’s nineteenth century gentlemen’s social clubs and were…
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The legacy and maladies of Jonathan Swift
JMS PearceEngland, UK Jonathan Swift (Fig 1.) is best known for his popular Lemuel Gulliver’s: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World published in 1726. (Fig 2.) Exciting adventures combine with satirical metaphors that parodied contemporary customs and politics. Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator, begins as a modern man but ends ironically as a mad…
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History repeated: Child abuse in the United States
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States Q: Did you see any place for this child to sleep in?A: No, Sir, except in one corner. The child told me she slept up in one corner of the room under the window.Q: Did she show you where she slept?A: No, Sir.Q: Did she state what she slept on?A:…
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Scurvy before James Lind
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Cures of disease are still relatively uncommon. Scurvy is an example of a disease well recognized but whose cause eluded doctors for centuries until an empirical curative remedy and later a specific cause were discovered. In more recent times Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in phthisis or consumption in 1882,…
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Origins of the Pap smear
When Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou brought his wife to America in 1913 he had $250 in his pocket. Both had to take menial jobs, she as a seamstress, he as a rug salesman, violin player in a restaurant, and clerk at a Greek newspaper. A year later, he obtained a position as laboratory technician at Cornell…
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Is history good for you? Pros and cons
Pro “ . . . a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”– George Santayana “A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.”– Sioux proverb “[History is] a pact between the dead, the living, and…