The hospital that treated patients with music
L. J. Sandlow Chicago, Illinois, United States High up in the mountains of Anatolia, bordering the Black Sea, lies the ancient hospital of Bimarhane or Darüşşida. Located in the city of Amasya, it was built during the reign of the Ilkanid Sultan Mehmet and his wife Uduz Olcaytu Anbar and constructed by Babe Bin […]
The Bengal tiger: Panthera tigris tigris
James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States The Indian subcontinent for millennia provided the ideal “jungle” habitat for the tiger. When the first Europeans arrived in India the animal was ubiquitous. At the close of the nineteenth century, when Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, 100,000 tigers were thought to roam the subcontinent. By […]
All too human: the mountain gorillas of Uganda
James Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States Fig. 1. Adult female mountain gorilla The Ugandan mountain gorilla is a member of the Hominidae family, also known as the great Apes. The extant species include: the orangutan, the eastern and western gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo, and ourselves, Homo sapiens. The mountain gorilla is one […]
Running in my blood
Niina Majaniemi Pirkanmaa, Finland Picture from Marathon Photos.com. Source Some people are drawn to dancing, others to traveling or baking cakes. My passion is to torture myself by running for twenty-six miles, usually in very hot weather. Why? I could give you countless reasons. The thrill. The sense of achievement. Pushing boundaries. The blood […]
A column of volcanic sand
David Gullette Boston, Massachusetts, USA The original all-concrete BioSand Filters we made for many years. 330 lbs without its sand. Why shouldn’t a retired English professor devote himself to Public Health? I fell hard for Nicaragua in the 1980s, organizing Boston academics against Contra aid, visiting the country in 1986 with Father Steve Chinlund, […]
Nothing prepares you for this
Anne L. Rooney Oak Park, Illinois, USA Photo by Medici con I’Africa Cuamm There are never enough beds. Seventy women lie side by side on the floor of a hospital ward intended for thirty patients. Some sleep on torn brown blankets on the cement floor. Those lucky enough to have a bed have neither […]
Behind the green partition
James Smith United Kingdom Author’s note Any attempt to truly understand the impact of humanitarian crises on individual lives, particularly when perpetuated over the course of many years, may feel like an ever-receding ambition for those invested in humanitarian response. This is further complicated by sectoral advocacy strategies and programmes that speak of aggregate […]
A visit to New York: a wonderful town
George Dunea Originally published in the British Medical Journal, December 8, 1979. New York remains exciting, vast, wonderfully alive. On Fifth Avenue, elegant ladies promenade in the sun, ride in horse carriages, spend their money at Gucci’s and Tiffany’s, or cast wistful eyes at the window where Empress Josephine’s tiara and the emerald-studded crown […]
Beyond negativity
Lynn Veach Sadler Pittsboro, North Carolina, United States Photography by leniners My husband Emory and I have traveled to China five times since participating in the (Eisenhower) People to People’s Citizen Ambassador Program from May 21 through June 2, 1995. Then we were members of a “Biofeedback Delegation to the People’s Republic of China” and visited […]
Doctor on an expedition to the Antarctic
Bryan Walpole Hobart, Tasmania It is 0330, half an hour before change of watch. The sun low in the southeast glares painfully onto the bridge. Here at sixty-two degrees south icebergs abound, radar looks like a polka dot quilt, and a continuous layer of pancake ice with nasty growlers on the surface and a […]