Tag: anxiety
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Mental health issues in medical students: The prejudice and the injury
Amairani Gómez RodríguezPuebla, Mexico The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway. I had my first panic attack at seventeen. Biochemistry was a total headache; no matter how hard I studied, it was never enough to pass. As a school overachiever, I had never experienced failure. I…
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Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape
Mirjana Stojkovic-Ivkovic Belgrade, Serbia The Rape. Oil painting by René Magritte, 1934. Menil Collection, Houston, TX, via Wikiart. Fair use. When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and…
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Herbert William Page and the railway spine controversy
Jonathan Davidson Durham, North Carolina, United States Figure 1. Herbert William Page. Archives of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The first passenger railway journey resulted in the death of a prominent British politician.1 During the 1830s and 1840s,2 railway travel became a popular means of transport in Victorian Britain. By the 1850s,…
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Dancing with spiders: tarantellas and tarantism
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “There are always hysterical people undergoing extraordinary cures.” – Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man Etching of people dancing the tarantella and playing music as an antidote to a tarantula bite. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. The industrial city of Taranto is in the “heel” of boot-shaped Italy. The Romans called…
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Robert James Graves MD FRS
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom He fed fevers Robert Graves Fig 1. Clinical Lectures on the Practice of Medicine In Paris in 1828 there was a remarkable epidemic of acute sensori-motor polyneuropathy known as épidémie de Paris. Described by Auguste-Francois Chomel, the cause was a mystery.1 As a neurologist, my interest in…
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Traumatic experience and creativity: René Magritte
Mirjana Stojkovic-Ivkovic Belgrade, Serbia The Lovers. René Magritte, 1928. Fair use. A painter’s creativity often results from artistic inspiration, but it can also be a manifestation of fear, pain, and suffering. René Magritte (1898–1967), a Belgian painter and great figure in modern art, expressed his thoughts and his feelings on the canvas. His unique…
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“It would be like I never existed”: two minutes with manic psychosis, 1978
Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States Foreword Photo by Isai Ramos on Unsplash Mental illness is often marginalized by non-psychiatric clinicians, yet it causes as much suffering, if not more, than physical illness. I was a medical student completing a rotation in psychiatry when I observed the encounter described here. The patient had…
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Hypochondria
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Figure 1: Cover of Hypochondriasis. A practical treatise by John Hill. Source. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. —…