Tag: China
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What does the zoonotic origin of COVID-19 teach us about preventing future pandemics?
James A. Marcum Waco, Texas, United States Computer generated representation of COVID-19 virions (SARS-CoV-2) under electron microscope. Image by Felipe Esquivel Reed. Via Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0 The history of medicine reveals that epidemics and pandemics have plagued humanity throughout the centuries.1 Examples include the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Justinian plague (541-542 A.D.),…
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Book review: A Brief History of Ayurveda
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of A Brief History of Ayurveda by M.R. Raghava Varier. Ayurveda translates from the Sanskrit as “the science of life and longevity.” It originated over 4,000 years ago as a system of healing in the Indian subcontinent, where it flourished until the nineteenth century. The Harappan civilization…
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The global journey of variolation
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Humanity has eliminated only one infectious disease—smallpox. Smallpox is a very old disease and efforts to prevent it are almost as old. They included a technique called variolation, also known as inoculation or engrafting, in which individuals were infected with live smallpox virus to produce a milder form of the…
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The scourge, the scientist, and the swindle
Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States Alice Augusta Ball, 1915. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as…
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Mary Niles and the Canton rats
Edward McSweegan Kinston, Rhode Island, United States Doctor Mary West Niles, Wikipedia Bubonic plague arrived in Honolulu in December 1899. A month later it had spread to San Francisco, where the infection caused a series of deadly outbreaks until 1907.1 But for decades before plague reached the American west coast, it had burned through…
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Ophthalmology in Regency era China: a portrait of Thomas Richardson Colledge by George Chinnery
Stephen MartinThailand Thomas Richardson Colledge (1797-1879) was an ophthalmic surgeon who practiced in Macao, China, for a quarter of a century in the late Regency era. Colledge’s daughter, Frances Mary Martin (1847-1918) wrote a brief biography of him in 1880.1 It is an absorbing and touching account, and important in relation to an extraordinary medical…
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The hunt for a yellow fever therapy
Edward McSweegen Kingston, Rhode Island, United States Roux’s syringe for delivering antitoxin, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Source In March 2020, a research group in China reported the use of convalescent plasma to treat ten patients suffering from coronavirus COVID-19 infections.1 This type of therapy—passive immunization—dates back to 1891 when the German bacteriologist Emil…