Category: Physicians of Note
-
Ruggero Oddi: Brilliant physician and victim of gaslighting by the Congo Free State
Eli EhrenpreisSkokie, Illinois, United States When Ruggero Oddi (1864–1913) was a medical student at the University of Bologna, he performed studies detailing the physiology of the biliary sphincter. This work became Oddi’s legacy, setting the stage for modern biliary and pancreatic clinical science. Without Oddi’s research, we would not have reached our current state-of-the-art in…
-
Abraham de Balmes ben Meir, Jewish Italian physician and polymath
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Abraham de Balmes ben Meir (c. 1460–1523) was a Jewish physician and polymath from the baroque Italian city of Lecce in the south of Italy, where his grandfather had served as personal physician to King Ferdinand I of Naples. He studied medicine in Naples but left in 1510 when Jewish people…
-
Henri Parinaud—French physician, composer, and humanitarian
Jason JoNew York, New York Henri Parinaud (c. 1844–1905), a pioneer in the fields of neurology and ophthalmology, is best remembered for his two eponymous syndromes: the Parinaud oculoglandular syndrome and Parinaud’s syndrome (dorsal midbrain syndrome).1 However, Parinaud himself, given his humility and unassuming personality, did not hope for such a celebrated legacy. As Robert…
-
Corn, pellagra, and modern medicine—How an ancient disease was recognized in South Carolina’s state lunatic asylum
Brody FoglemanHarsh JhaNoel BrownleeJuliSu DiMucci-WardSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States Pellagra is a disease of vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency. Niacin is the precursor for many physiologic processes involving nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), an enzyme that carries out long biochemical processes essential to a wide range of metabolic functions. While the understanding of niacin physiology is relatively…
-
Steller’s Sea eagle: Who was Georg Wilhelm Steller?
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The Steller’s Sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus) handily outsizes the national bird of the United States, the Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). Steller’s Sea eagle is the heaviest eagle in the world: females weigh from thirteen to twenty pounds and males weigh between eleven and fifteen pounds. Its seven-foot wingspan is…
-
Whitlock Nicholl: Physician and theological writer
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel In November 1839, Dr. John Clendinning delivered at the St. Marylebone Infirmary a lecture on the examination of the sick, the principal sources of fallacy attending practical diagnosis, and “on feignted [not “feigned”] and concealed diseases, and insidious complications of disease.”1 The lecturer discussed “hysteria” and other neuroses, and a disease…
-
The three knights of thyrotoxicosis
Of the three physicians who described thyrotoxicosis, Karl Adolph von Basedow is the least known, especially in the English-speaking world. Born at Dessau in 1799, Basedow studied medicine at Halle University, worked as a physician in various cities of Germany, and in 1835 was appointed Director of the Clinic for Internal Medicine at the University…
-
Jean Astruc, the “compleat physician”
Jean Astruc was born in 1684 in Sauve, France and studied medicine at Montpellier, graduating in 1703. He then became professor of medicine in Toulouse (1710) and Montpellier (1716), superintendent of the local mineral waters (1721), physician to the king of Poland (1729), and professor of medicine at the royal College of Medicine in Paris…
-
The satirical side of William Osler, M.D.
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “But whatever you do, take neither yourself nor your fellow creatures too seriously.”1– William Osler, MD “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest…”– Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in Hamlet, Act V Scene I, by William Shakespeare William Osler, MD (1849–1919), called “the father of modern medicine,”2 was…
-
Pierre Charles Louis of the numerical method
Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787–1872) was a physician and epidemiologist who made significant contributions to medicine. He worked on the transmission of infectious diseases and developed the concept of “therapeutic nihilism” in the treatment of disease. Louis grew up during the French Revolution, studied medicine in Reims and Paris, and received his medical degree in…