The pandemic: a medical student’s perspective
Saira Elizabeth Alex Houston, Texas, United States The Isle of the Dead. Max Klinger after Arnold Böcklin. 1890. The Art Institute of Chicago. As medical students, we eagerly await the start of clinical rotations since the first day of school; we anticipate building memorable connections with our colleagues and patients. This is an account of my days […]
Prayer to St. Roch, patron of plague sufferers
Jack Coulehan Stony Brook, New York San Roque. Francisco Ribalta, between circa 1600 and circa 1610. Museu de Belles Arts de València. Via Wikimedia. Please take your work to the next step, St. Roch, beyond being a friendly ghost to the lost. Bring us back from the edge. Pour out the healing grace of your […]
Drawing parallels in pandemic art
Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta Victor Grech Pembroke, Malta Photo of the crowd at an undetermined 1918 Georgia Tech home football game. Photo by Thomas Carter, Public domain. Via Wikimedia. “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down […]
COVID-19 and the Black Death
Colleen Donnelly Denver, Colorado, United States A street during the plague in London with a death cart and mourners. Colour wood engraving by E. Evans. Wellcome Library no. 6918i. Source During the fourteenth century waves of the bubonic plague washed across Europe. Doomsday books of the age described an apocalypse that wiped out one-quarter […]
COVID time
Norelle Lickiss Hobart, Tasmania, Australia View of Earth, showing Africa, Europe, and Asia–taken by Apollo 11 crewmember. 17 July 1969. Image by NASA, Johnson Space Center. Who will be the chronicler of this? of how the tower fell, of how the tolling bell sounded the world’s crying. And how the darkness fell, […]
Remembering Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, physician philosopher
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States Photograph of the author and Dr. Pellegrino. Courtesy of the author. “Get Wisdom.” – Proverbs 4:5 One day in the spring of 1985, I remember jogging past the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, wondering what went on in there. It was a gorgeous afternoon, dogwoods and […]
Use of masks to control the spread of infection: more than a century of confusion
Jayant Radhakrishnan Darien, Illinois, United States The above photograph is from the archives of the Cook County Hospital when it closed. It was taken in the surgical amphitheater in the main building. The year is not known. The photograph demonstrates an operation being carried out by masked and gowned surgeons and the scrub nurse […]
The Plague and physician burnout
Geoffrey Rubin Mark Abrams D. Edmund Anstey New York, New York, United States [Bedside scenes: Doctors visit patient]. 1534. The National Library of Medicine. In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague,1 Doctor Rieux is a consummate physician, a hero and a “true healer.” His main charge is to compassionately perform his duty—a matter, in his […]
When I heard the learn’d epidemiologist
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States Photo by prottoy hassan on Unsplash Sitting on the maroon recliner in my den, I am having trouble concentrating on the epidemiologist who is talking on the television. He points to a Covid hot zone on a color-coded map of the United States. The screen changes before I can locate Virginia. […]
Literatim: essays at the intersections of medicine and culture
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Cover of Literatim: Essays at the Intersections of Medicine and Culture In this interesting collection, medical historian Howard Markel has brought together his previously published essays from the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and the PBS Newsletter into one volume. The collection of […]