Tag: blind
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Learning the vocabulary of medicine (and other foreign languages)
Edward Tabor Bethesda, Maryland, United States Some of the sources of medical vocabulary. Photo by author. Both of my parents were physicians, and their discussions were often medical. One weekend when I was about four years old, I listened to one such conversation at lunch and interrupted to ask, “When I grow up, will…
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“Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing
Katherine Harvey London, England, United Kingdom A medieval miniature showing St Mark reading a book and holding spectacles to his eyes. From Jean Poyer, The Tilliot Hours (c. 1500), The British Library. On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half…
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Pieter Bruegel and The Parable of the Blind
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch.”—Matthew 15:14, King James Version 21st Century The Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (b.ca.1525-d.1569), who lived and worked in Brussels, was considered “the most perfect painter of his century.”1…
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Blessed is the heart
Jeanne Bryner Newton Falls, Ohio, United States Study of standing chute. Dominik Skutecký. 1880-1900. Slovak National Gallery. Image Source Peacemaker inside the great barn father of us all, he passes the meat plate, its thick roast to the left his fork last in line. Bless his bulbous nose, ruddy face and bloodshot eyes, his slur…
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Falls and art: An evolving story
Glenn ArendtsMurdoch, Australia Coming to rest inadvertently on the ground:1 the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a fall sounds vaguely patronizing, bordering on disinterested. The human act of staying upright is a complex triumph of the integration of neurosensory, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems, and its failure is associated with injury, fear, and embarrassment. Ancient…
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Waiting for the darkness to lift
Sheila Klass New York, New York, United States Amsler chart with macular degeneration From early childhood I wanted to be a writer and tell stories. But Mama and Papa, impoverished and struggling to survive at the end of the Great Depression, scoffed at such ideas and insisted I should be enrolled in a commercial…