Tag: Catholicism
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Martyrs and saints in art, history, and medicine
The concept of martyrdom has deep roots in religious traditions. Christian martyrs suffered and died for their faith, such as Saint Stephen, who was the first Christian martyr, as well as St. Sebastian pierced with arrows and St. Joan of Arc burned at the stake. In Islam, the term “shahid” refers to persons who died…
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Santa Margherita da Cortona
Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States From humble beginnings to years as a mistress, Margherita altered her path to become a tertiary Franciscan penitent, attending the ill and poor, founding a hospital, and devoting herself to Christ. She was in the vanguard of several other women of the late Middle Ages…
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Can headless martyrs really walk? The belief in cephalophores in the Middle Ages
Andrew Wodrich Washington, DC Saint Denis of Paris holding his severed head. Mid-15th century depiction from an illuminated prayer book (Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 5, fol. 35v, 84.ML.723.35v). The halos surrounding his decapitated head as well as the stump of his neck suggest that the soul and saintliness of St. Denis remain in…
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John Caius, the polymath who described the sweating sickness
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States John Caius (1510-1573), Master of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 1563. Unknown painter. Credit: Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. Imagine being a physician in a rural community in England in the mid-sixteenth century, always concerned with the reappearance of the Black Death. Late one summer you…
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The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore
Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States Obelisk over Hodgkin grave site in Jaffa, Israel. Moses Montefiore, on his return to England, purchased a column of Aberdeen granite nine feet tall and had it inscribed with a lengthy tribute to Hodgkin “as a mark of my respect and esteem.” It was transported to…
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The legacy and maladies of Jonathan Swift
JMS Pearce England, UK Fig 1. Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (Fig 1.) is best known for his popular Lemuel Gulliver’s: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World published in 1726. (Fig 2.) Exciting adventures combine with satirical metaphors that parodied contemporary customs and politics. Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator, begins as a modern man…
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Pantaleon or Pantaleimon—A most noble physician
Maria MonteiroPorto, Portugal As information about the life of Saint Pantaleon is entangled with tradition, it difficult to distinguish myth from facts. Nevertheless, according to several sources, Pantaleon was born c. AD 275, son of the rich pagan Eustorgius of Nicomedia. His name means “a lion in everything.” Later he would be renamed Pantaleímon (from…
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Doctorum Ecclesiae: The medical clerics of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, England
Adam S. Komorowski Sang Ik Song Limerick, Ireland It is difficult to remember that in medieval and early modern Europe the church was often the locus of medical practice and that medicine and religion had a symbiotic co-existence.1 Many of the early Christian Church Fathers, some given the title Doctors of the Church, saw their roles…
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Art, Cristobal Rojas, and tuberculosis: a Latin American cultural experience
Maria S. LandaetaAldo L. SchenoneGregory W. Rutecki Tuberculosis, the “captain of all these men of death,” has devastated diverse societies for thousands of years. How are experiences related to this unforgiving and seemingly insatiable disease made unique by their cultural contexts? The visual arts provide a record of this disease as it relates to specific…