Tag: chloroform
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The satirical side of William Osler, M.D.
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cartoon of William Osler as a cherub in charge of a cyclone banishing all disease from Johns Hopkins Hospital. Drawing by Max Brodel, a medical illustrator at the hospital, 1896. National Library of Medicine. Public domain. “But whatever you do, take neither yourself nor your fellow creatures too seriously.”1 –…
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Hans Christian Andersen, James Young Simpson, and ether frolics
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom In May 1847, the widely admired writer of literary fairy tales and stories Hans Christian Andersen (Fig 1) left Copenhagen on a tour of Germany and Holland and arrived in London on June 23. There he was enthusiastically received by Joseph Hambro, a Danish entrepreneur, banker, whom he knew from…
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Memories of a West Virginia coal camp
Calvin KuninColumbus, Ohio, United States This is a brief account of my experience as a physician at a coal mining camp in rural West Virginia. It is based on my memory of events that took place almost seventy years ago but remain vivid in my mind. The adventure began the day I graduated from medical…
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Lawson Tait, father of aseptic surgery and gynecology
Robert Lawson Tait. via Wikimedia. Robert Lawson Tait was fifth in a dynasty of pioneers who helped transform surgery from a primitive craft to a sophisticated life-saving art. They all worked for a time at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary—James Syme (the “Napoleon of Surgery”), Robert Liston (“time me, gentlemen”), James Simpson (“made childbirth painless”), and…
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James Simpson, who made childbirth painless
A large jolly man with broad shoulders, large hands, blue eyes, and a charismatic personality, James Young Simpson was said to have been the most popular man in Edinburgh since the death of Sir Walter Scott.1 Born in 1811 at Bathgate, he was the seventh son of a village baker in a poor family housed in…
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Banishing that dread of being cut
Samuel Spencer Reading, Berkshire, UK An unconscious naked man lying on a table being attacked by little demons armed with surgical instruments, watercolous by R. Cooper. In 1863, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was returning to camp after routing Federal armies at Chancellorsville, when he was mistaken for a Union cavalryman by his own…