Tag: 20th century
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Psychiatric care at the historical Athens Mental Health Facility
Cherron Payne Farmington, Connecticut, United States Athens Asylum for the Insane, Athens State Hospital Administration Building, Circa late 19th Century to early 20th Century. Ohio University Archives. When I was an undergraduate student at Ohio University in Athens, my friends and I would often hike to an intriguing place called the Ridges, overlooking the picturesque…
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Malaria in defeat and victory
Richard J. E. Brown Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom Lab work in progress at the Royal Navy School of Malaria and Hygiene, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1944. IWM Non-Commercial Licence © IWM A 28167. A few weeks ago, in the reading room of the National Archives in London, I came across the war diary of a…
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The forerunner
Shafiqah Samarasam Malaysia Skyline in Kuala Lumpur with haze. 2004. Photo by Nesnad. Via Wikimedia. CC BY 3.0. Southeast Asia has experienced detrimental, large-scale air pollution for decades. Known as the “Southeast Asia haze,” this transboundary pollution is largely caused by illegal agricultural fires in the forests of Indonesia. The lingering smoke results in breathing…
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Abhay Sadhak (fearless seeker): Baba Amte
Utkarsh G. Hingmire Nagpur, India Baba Amte. This file is a copyrighted work of the Government of India, licensed under the Government Open Data License – India (GODL). Via Wikimedia. Murlidhar Devidas Amte, affectionately known as Baba Amte, was a lawyer who left his lucrative legal career to devote his life to the treatment of…
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Alexis Carrel: the sunshine and the shadow
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Alexis Carrel. Unknown photographer. 1912. From Popular Science Monthly Volume 81, on the Internet Archive. Via Wikimedia. Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his…
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The Lazarus phenomenon: when the dead return to life
Tom Sewe Nairobi, Kenya Photo by Günter Valda on Unsplash It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their…
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Matron Charlotte Evelyn Nelson (1938-1954) and her portrait by Alice Burton
Frederick John O’Dell Northampton, United Kingdom Miss C E Nelson, 1955, by Alice Burton. Northampton General Hospital private collection. Image photograph by the author. Charlotte Evelyn Nelson (1894-1959) was born on 13 July 1894 in Hull. Before her sixth birthday she was orphaned, as the 1901 census lists her at the Hull Seamans and…
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Mental hospital memories of another era
Robert Craig Brisbane, Queensland, Australia The former St. Audry’s Hospital. Photo by Adrian S Pye. CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1964, having obtained a place to study medicine at Cambridge University, I was given the opportunity as a medical student to work as an assistant nurse for three months in a large residential mental hospital…