Category: Science
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Charles Darwin’s illnesses on HMS Beagle
JMS PearceHull, England Charles Darwin (1809–1882) for much of his life was subject to illness and periods of invalidity. Their cause has been widely debated.1 Darwin joined the second voyage of HMS Beagle in December 1831. Under Captain FitzRoy, its prime purposes were to study weather systems and to survey and chart new territories. It…
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A magnificent late seventeenth-century German pharmacy cabinet
Christopher DuffinLondon, England Small, portable apothecary cabinets were once popular for household, travel, and campaign purposes, but few have survived from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Several are exhibited in German museums,1 including one spectacular example in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Münich. The cabinet represents a fusion of artistic media. The goldsmith was Joseph Herterich…
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A brief history of fluorescein
Vidhi NaikAberdeen, Scotland Fluorescein, a strikingly bright orange-yellow liquid, is an essential tool in ophthalmic practice. Its synthesis marked a pivotal moment in the intersection of chemistry and medicine. Created by Adolf von Baeyer, a Nobel prizewinning chemist, in 1871, fluorescein originated as a product of industrial organic chemistry but soon became central to ophthalmic…
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Friedrich Welwitsch, physician and botanist (1806–1872)
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel I believe not too many people have heard of the Austrian physician-botanist Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872; Friderik Velbic in Slovene). He studied in Vienna and practiced medicine in Slovenia and Moravia. In 1839 he gave up medicine and concentrated on botany, moving to Portugal and becoming director of the botanical gardens. He studied first…
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Johannes Mesuë’s electuary of gems
Christopher DuffinLondon, England Gemstones such as sapphire, ruby, emerald, and topaz are complex silicate minerals. Their distinctive and intense colors, hardness, durability, and rarity suggested medicinal value to medieval scholars, famously summarized in medieval lapidary texts, or books about such stones. In the early 15th century, Monsieur Chiquart, Master Chef to the Duke of Savoy,…
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Dr. George Finlayson and his mighty little squirrel
Stephen MartinThailand Part of running a museum in tropical Thailand is caring for distressed animals on the grounds. We have no choice, because the nearest wildlife rehabbers are in California. Sunshine drives life, so Thailand has a gloriously rich natural history. The museum’s animal patients range from skinks and turtles to Meissen the injured myna…
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The history of chemotherapy
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States When Sahachirō Hata developed a cure for syphilis while working in Paul Ehrlich’s laboratory,1 Ehrlich began to look for other chemicals that could destroy infectious agents without affecting normal host cells. In 1907, he coined the term chemotherapy2 and declared that “the optimal agent would combine high parasitotropism with low…
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Spontaneous regression of cancer
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Unexplainable events have always intrigued people. At the top of this list of the uncommon and perplexing is spontaneous cure or regression of cancer. A cure requires that the lesion disappear completely, never to return, letting the person live for a substantial period, and to later succumb from some other…
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René Descartes
JMS PearceHull, England René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. So profound and diverse were his writings1,2 that this is no more than a slight sketch of his extraordinarily original ideas and his contributions to medicine. A year after his birth in Touraine, his mother died in childbirth and his grandmother cared…
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Jacques-Louis David’s portrayal of Lavoisier
JMS PearceHull, England In the 1780s, a period of rumbling social unrest in France, the lives of two famous men, a scientist and an artist, would interact. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) is often associated with the discovery of oxygen; Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) was the preeminent neoclassical artist. Lavoisier was a French nobleman, justly celebrated for…