Category: Vignettes at Large
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Look what they’ve done to my brain: Einstein’s last wish ignored
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.”– Bob Dylan, “License to Kill” Albert Einstein (1879–1955) is considered to be one of the most influential scientists of all time. His childhood, though, was not very promising. He did not speak until he was three years old. There is also reason to believe…
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What can the candiru (Vandellia cirrhosa) do?
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Lateral view of the candiru Paracanthopoma sp. in field aquarium. From Jansen Zuanon and Ivan Sazima, “Free meals on long-distance cruisers: the vampire fish rides giant catfishes in the Amazon,” Biota Neotropica 5, no. 1 (2005), via ResearchGate. CC BY-NC 4.0. “[N]o one has stepped forward to observe the candiru’s life…
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Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science, 1919–1933
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden German students and Nazi SA plunder the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Director of the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. May 6, 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. “Per scientiam ad justitiam” (Justice through science) – Motto engraved over the…
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Last rites x2
Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom In the late 1960s, I was non-resident neurology house physician in a hospital in central London when we admitted a prominent citizen as a private patient. He was suffering from a catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage—he was moribund, but the decision was taken to perform cerebral angiography (it was before…
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“Brace, brace, brace!”—“Are we all going to die?”
Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom Flying to and from Scotland as an airline passenger years ago sometimes involved small aircraft. The smallest from Edinburgh to Belfast at one time was so small that a hostess got on at departure, wriggled between the passengers handing out packages, and then squirmed back and disembarked. Perfectly…
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The bicycle and the gene pool
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cyclists c. 1900 in Greymouth, New Zealand. Crop of photo from National Library NZ on The Commons on Flickr. “The most important event in recent human evolution was the invention of the bicycle.”1 – Steve Jones, biologist The invention of a safe, reliable, and relatively cheap bicycle occurred at…
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The ordeal of Mary Ann Bevan
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “May you be the proof that man can endure anything.” – Yiddish curse “Beauty vanishes; virtue is lasting.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Mary Ann Bevan before and after acromegaly. Grid created with Canva by Stela G. on Medium. Public domain photos. From the 1840s through the 1940s, “freak…
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The tapeworm diet: Myth, mostly
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Weight loss ad depicting tapeworms as the solution to fat. US FDA via Flickr. “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use…‘we.’” – Attributed to Mark Twain The tapeworm is a flatworm that can live in the human intestine. Humans acquire tapeworms by eating…
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Haff disease: We don’t know all of it
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Dish of crawdads. Photo by Justin Watt via Wikimedia. CC BY 3.0. “It was an unbelievably sad thing to watch. Strong men being carried from their fishing boats to their homes—completely stiff and utterly helpless.” – Witness to 1924 disease outbreak In the history of medicine there are examples…
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A tale of two cities
Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel Henry Dunant. Via Wikimedia. I wish that when I visited the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland years ago, I had also seen the German island of Reichenau and the Swiss village of Heiden 104 km to the south. Both are on Lake Constance, which the Germans call Bodensee…