Tag: Baltimore Railroad
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Albania: Tradition and resilience in the Western Balkans
Albania is a small country of 2.5 million people, well worth visiting, known for its striking natural landscapes, rugged mountains dominating much of the interior, and coast offering some of the most beautiful beaches in the Mediterranean. In the north, the Albanian Alps attract hikers… Read more
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Albanian lovers and magnetism in Così fan tutte
In Così fan tutte, Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte have the two male protagonists, Ferrando and Guglielmo, return in disguise to test, by wager, the fidelity of their fiancées. The choice of the disguise as Albanians, at first sight exotic and comic, resonates deeply with late 18th-century memories… Read more
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Marco Polo: A medical perspective
Marco Polo’s journey from Venice to the court of Kublai Khan and back spanned roughly 24 years, from 1271 to 1295. In his account, Il Milione (also known as The Travels of Marco Polo), he documents many aspects of life and medicine in his time.… Read more
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The ancient Philistines of Ashkelon and Gaza
The Philistines are remembered primarily through biblical narratives and archaeological discoveries. They interacted with neighboring cultures in the early Iron Age (ca. 1200–600 BCE) and are believed to have been part of the broader “Sea Peoples,” likely originating in the Aegean before settling along the… Read more
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Death, part of life itself: Vision of a surgeon
Miguel Vassallo PalermoElena Sophia HernandezJosé Manuel GarcíaRhayniveth SequeraKeldrin PáezCaracas, Venezuela Since the dawn of humanity, humans have tried to find meaning in death. People often fear the dying process itself, what comes after death, and the unknown.1 Feelings of powerlessness lead us to surround death… Read more
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Theopompus of Chios and public health in antiquity
Theopompus was a Greek historian and rhetorician who lived from c. 380 to 315 BCE. He was not a physician, yet his works offer a window into how the ancient Greeks understood health, disease, and contagion. Born on the Aegean island of Chios in c.… Read more
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Dronacharya: A father, a teacher, and a human
Rao UppuBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States The epics of ancient India, particularly the Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics, offer enduring insights into human nature. Among them, Dronacharya, a revered teacher of warfare and royal preceptor to the Kuru princes, stands out as… Read more
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Memento mori and ora pro nobis: Finding healing in sacred art
Marilyn NapolitanoScottsdale, Arizona, United States A storied connection exists between religion and medicine. The first hospitals were monasteries and convents, where holistic care tended to spiritual needs alongside those of the body. From the Middle Ages on, religious orders played a major role in the… Read more
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Slovenia: A young, independent country
The maps of the world are ever-changing as small principalities grow into mighty empires, which, in their turn, decline and break apart. The Slovenians, ever since their arrival from the Eastern European plains, have been part of several permutations and combinations, eventually belonging to the… Read more
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Takotsubo syndrome in art: A tale of broken hearts
Rafiq YusifliSevil YusifliBaku, Azerbaijan The role of emotional factors in the development of cardiovascular diseases has long been a focus of attention for physicians and researchers. Some acute cardiac pathologies that arise following intense emotional stress were only defined as independent entities toward the end… Read more
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Serbia: History, war, and medicine
The territory of present-day Serbia has been inhabited since prehistoric times, most notably by the Vinča culture (c. 5700–4500 BCE), one of Europe’s earliest advanced societies. This sophisticated civilization produced early forms of proto-writing and advanced ceramic artistry as well as early medical awareness, including… Read more
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Hamlet and everyone after
Panayiota AntypasTasmania, Australia For most of my life, I believed that suicidality was a direct consequence of acute and unmedicated mental illness. I thought that if we admitted the patient, removed the means, and administered treatment, they would be quickly reinvigorated with a will to… Read more