Tag: cholera
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Ernest Black Struthers: missionary life, kala azar, and military strife
Peter KopplinToronto, Canada In 1934 the third edition of Cecil’s A Textbook of Medicine contained a chapter by an academically obscure missionary in China.1 Russell Cecil, still editing the book by himself with only the help of a neurology colleague, chose Ernest Black Struthers to write about kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis). Most North American physicians…
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A disease of society: cholera through the ages
Khameer Kishore KidiaUnited Kingdom Cholera is something else, it is the invisible, it is the curse of the olden days, of times passed, a sort of evil spirit that comes back and that surprises us so much that it haunts us, because it belongs to what appears to be a forgotten age. Doctors make me…
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A Return to a Moralistic Perception of Disease: Prudence in the Time of Cholera
Lauren Lewis During the 1830s, a critical shift in thinking occurred about the causes of disease as medical practitioners increasingly shifted their views of causation towards the environment and away from morality and the individual. However, not all followed this shift in thinking, as evinced by Sylvester Graham, a deeply spiritual Presbyterian minister and dedicated…
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Passionate medicine: The emotional fight against epidemic disease
Tom Koch Toronto, Canada Great medicine is driven by great passion, by a sense of outrage at the indignity that a disease visits on its victims. Across history the search for a solution to epidemic diseases has been rooted not in a desire for acclaim, prestige, or a prize, but first and foremost in the researcher’s…