Category: History Essays
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Oaths, codes, and charters in medicine over the ages
L.J. SandlowChicago, Illinois, USA Introduction Medical oaths are solemn pledges taken by medical students as they complete their training and enter the practice of medicine. Oaths and codes summarize the profession’s mission to protect and restore human health. Taking an oath is the hallmark of a physician’s commitment to his profession. Present in all the major…
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“Uncertain disease”: The science of nostalgia
Kevis GoodmanBerkeley, California, USA William Cullen, the well-esteemed Edinburgh physician and professor of medicine at Glasgow and later Edinburgh, shared the “love of system” praised by no less than Adam Smith, who—not coincidentally—happened to be Cullen’s patient and friend.1 Cullen set out to gather all existing medical nosologies (the disease classifications that imitated Linnaean botanical…
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“And of scurvy the teeth fall out of them”
Katarina VillnerStockholm, Sweden And of scurvy the teeth fall out of them;for scurvy and throat diseases I have used lemonsas long I had any left, for as soon as I came downI bought 200 lemons from a Dutch ship and he had no more.1 Henrik Fleming, a Swedish nobleman, wrote the above quotation in a…
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Illness shapes the course of human events
K.N. LaiHong Kong, China These items, part of the Gerald Chow Memorial Lecture delivered to the Hong Kong College of Physicians, illustrate the many connections between medicine and the humanities, as well as exemplifying how illness shapes the course of human events and how even mild congenital anomalies may have catastrophic outcomes. Franklin Delano Roosevelt…
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Dame Cicely Saunders and the foundation of the hospice movement
Julie SilvermanSeattle, Washington, United States “Many doctors nowadays, when the death of their patients becomes imminent, seem to believe that it is quite proper to leave the dying in the care of the nurses and the sorrowing relatives,” lamented Dr. Alfred Worcester in 1935, “This shifting of responsibility is un-pardonable.”1 Then as now, abandoning patients…
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Eisenhower and Crohn’s Disease
James L. FranklinChicago, IL First published in the Illinois Carol Fisher Chapter Newsletter of September 11, 2005.Published by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. It is still well within the public consciousness that Dwight David Eisenhower suffered a myocardial infarction three years into his first term of office as President of the United States…
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The forgotten Darwin
JMS PearceHull, United Kingdom That Erasmus Darwin MD., FRS. (1731–1802) was overshadowed, often forgotten, is not surprising when one considers the well-deserved fame and importance of Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Stephen Jay Gould observed in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. 2002): “‘precursoritis’ is the bane of historiography.” Though no “bane of historiography,” Erasmus…
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Polymathy in decline?
J.M.S. PearceUnited Kingdom Try to know something about everything and everything about something.— Attributed to TH Huxley (1825–95) Polymaths are rare and interesting people. Their fund of learning enlightens conversation, provokes new ideas, and excites our imagination and understanding. The ancient Greeks concentrated on natural philosophy, (which roughly transmutes into “science”) the study of natural…