Tag: Chlamydia trachomatis
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Trachoma: Contained but not yet subdued
Trachoma is a chronic eye infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, a bacterium at first thought to be a virus because of its minuscule size. It is the most common infectious cause of blindness worldwide, striking repeatedly in early childhood and, until recently, blinding millions.1 In 1907, Ludwig Halberstadter and Stanislaus von Prowazek observed the causative…
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William Wordsworth: “The blind poet”?
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He was the totemic father of the Lakeland poets, who extolled the relation between man and the natural world: a wedding between nature and the human mind that to him symbolized the mind of God. A prolific writer…
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Tobias and the Angel—Miracle or medical?
Elizabeth Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Admirers of Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting Tobias and the Angel (circa 1470–1475) may be unaware of the purpose of Tobias’s journey with the archangel Raphael. The Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha posits a story of love and not-so-miraculous healing in seventh century B.C. Nineveh. Tobit, a devout Hebrew, suffers…