Category: History Essays
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A note on early microscopes
JMS PearceHull, England Letters, however small and dim, are comparatively large and distinct when seen through a glass globe filled with water.1Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) The Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen (1585–c. 1632) and his father Hans are thought to have made one of the earliest (c. 1600) compound microscopes, which had…
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Fashion-based medicine: A history of Western doctors’ dress
Shefali SoodWashington, DC, United States How do doctors dress? It depends on whom and when you ask. Just like other forms of clothing, the history of medical garb has been subject to the trends of time. While this has changed drastically in the past century, doctors’ dress profoundly reflects the societal expectations of their role.…
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Howard A. Knox and intelligence testing on Ellis Island
Carine Tabak Kansas City, Kansas, United States Interview during the mental examination of an immigrant on Ellis Island, conducted by two PHS officers and an interpreter. US National Library of Medicine Digital Collections. Between 1892 to 1924, twelve million men, women, and children entered the United States through the Ellis Island Immigration Center, making…
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From poppy to morphine and heroin
JMS Pearce Hull, England Among the remedies which it has pleased almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium. – Thomas Sydenham, 1680 The controversial pharmaceutical company Farbenfabriken Bayer AG* had an important role in the development of morphine, heroin, and aspirin,…
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Philip the Handsome and the plague
Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Tomb of Felipe I and Juana La Loca. Photo by Javi Guerra Hernando on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Philip of Habsburg was born in Bruges in 1478. He was the son of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, in…
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The secrecy behind JFK’s autoimmune disease
Jude Tunyi Columbus, Ohio, United States John F. Kennedy leaving on gurney from hospital following spinal surgery, as his wife Jacqueline stands over him. Dick DeMarsico, 1954. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Most Americans are familiar with the life and death of John F. Kennedy (JFK), but they may not know about…
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Temporary insanity in tropical waters
Richard de Grijs Sydney, Australia Frontispiece to the second edition (1639) of John Woodall’s The Surgion’s Mate, promising to outline “[t]he cures of the Scurvey [sic] … and of the Calenture.” Line engraving by George Glover. Wellcome Collection. So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture sees, On the smooth ocean’s azure bed,…
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Santa Margherita da Cortona
Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States From humble beginnings to years as a mistress, Margherita altered her path to become a tertiary Franciscan penitent, attending the ill and poor, founding a hospital, and devoting herself to Christ. She was in the vanguard of several other women of the late Middle Ages…
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Saved by the spoonful: Oral rehydration therapy (ORT)
Mariam AbdulghaniMichigan, United States In the early 1970s, the Bangladesh Liberation War caused a mass exodus of refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) into West Bengal, India. Some ten million people found sanctuary in camps along the Indian-Pakistan border, where the conditions of war during the monsoon season led to a cholera outbreak. The disease…
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The Doctors’ Trial and the Nuremberg Code
Shabrina Jarrell Charleston, West Virginia, United States “Dachau Concentration Camp workers.” Photo by Dale Cruse on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Tracing back to the Hippocratic Oath, which dates to around 400 BC, the principle of autonomy has been fundamental to the concept of informed consent.1,2 The Oath, a pledge historically taken by physicians, outlines…