Tag: Avi Ohry
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Mordecai B. Etziony: Canadian historian of medicine and ethicist
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Mordecai Etziony was born in 1904 and worked in the Department of Medicine at the Jewish General Hospital and Jewish Hospital of Hope, Montreal. He submitted his dissertation to McGill University in 1931 under the title “The problem of ’emotions’ with particular reference to the emotional life of the child.” He…
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Nicholas Cusanus
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Non-medical scientists and scholars often contribute substantially to medicine. Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–1464), also known as Nicholas of Cusa and Nikolaus Krebs von Kues, was a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, philosopher, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer. In Padua he earned a doctorate in canon law in 1423. He became a…
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On blue and blues
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel As a child born with blue eyes, I wondered why I don’t see the world around me in a blue color. Later in life, as an amateur jazz drummer, I was passionate about the popular song “Blue Moon” (1934), Jobim’s “No More Blues”, and blue jeans. The blue color dominates our…
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On Voltaire, Akakia, De Maupertuis, and another Akakia
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel When in 1718 François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) was released from incarceration at the Bastille, he changed his name to Voltaire. Soon he became an “enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation…
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Nonsense poetry
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently, I read the Israeli professor Rony Reich’s translation of German nonsense poetry (Deutsche Unsinnpoesie), and among them, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Lügenmärchen (Lying Fairy Tales). I translate from the Hebrew: …Three wished to catch a hare,On crutches they came—a team.One was deaf,The second blind, the third mute.And the fourth could…
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The two Kandinskys
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was a Russian painter, art theorist, co-founder of the “Blue Rider” art movement, pioneer of abstract painting,1 and part of the Fauvism and Bauhaus of Weimar movements. Neuroscientists regard him “as one of the most prominent examples of a synesthetic artist.”2 Kandinsky postulated a fundamental synesthesia between color and…
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Notable achievements by people who have lost an upper limb
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Working for the last fifty years in rehabilitation medicine and playing the drums in two jazz bands, I have always looked for stories of people who, in spite of chronic illness or disability, have accomplished much in art, music, politics, or science.1-3 Some of these include those who have achieved without…
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On Hortons among history
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel I believe I met Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in 1999 in Glasgow during the two-day symposium on Medicine & Literature on the 400-year anniversary of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. On that occasion, I also met and chatted with Professor William Bryan Jennett CBE…
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Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932), physician and educator
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932) was “one of the most conspicuous figures in American medicine,” rembered for developing the doctrine of focal infection from bacteria of the Streptococcus pneumococcus group via the teeth, tonsils, and other portals.1-3 Born in Wisconsin, he worked as a young man as a farmer and schoolmaster before…
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Limping into victory
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel There were people with disabilities in history who were not “limping into oblivion,”1 but rather paved their way to accomplishments and victories.2 The emperor Claudius, who may have had cerebral palsy or dystonia, reigned in the first century AD. During that time, the Roman Empire expanded greatly. He decreed that if…