Tag: Fall 2013
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Feto-nosophobia
Bryan SiskSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Never underestimate a medical student’s capacity for worry. Whether anxious about an upcoming exam or beginning a new rotation with a curmudgeonly attending, no one makes it through medical school without having to battle these existential butterflies. I found this to be especially true while I was on a…
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Doctors as angels and devils
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States The Physician as god, angel, man, and devilFour colored engravings, 1609Johann Galle after Egbert van PanderenCollection of the Wellcome Institute, London These four colored engravings from 1609 by Johann Gelle after the design of Egbert van Panderen tell the waxing and waning reputation of the physician from the eye of…
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Giulio Clovio: Miniaturist and manuscript illuminator
For much of his career, Giorgio Giulio Clovio, the greatest miniaturist and manuscript illuminator of his time, was pursued by ill luck. Born in Croatia in 1498 and first working in Venice, he went to seek his fortune in the service of the King of Hungary. But unfortunately the King was defeated and killed by…
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The two hemispheres of medicine
Jeffrey LevineNew York, New York, United States I stared at the blank surface of my drawing pad, confused and frozen in fear. It was slightly larger than a sheet of typing paper but looked like it spread from horizon to horizon. The naked model sat leisurely, unashamed, her eyes fixed on a distant, imaginary cloud…
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Géricault’s art of insanity
Caitlin MeyerScotland “Now I am disoriented and confused. I try in vain to find support; nothing seems solid, everything escapes me, deceives me. Our earthly hopes and desires are only vain fancies, our successes mere mirages that we try to grasp,” scrawled Théodore Géricault in a letter to his friend Dedreux-Dorcy in 1810.1 A master…
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An image in time: medical photography in dermatology
Andrea MarksUnited Kingdom Medical imaging has always been an important and valuable tool in the practice of medicine.14 Before the introduction of photography in the late nineteenth century, medical professionals used wax models, illustrations, and paintings to document clinical conditions and procedures.7,14 Photography has been used in the medical setting for over a century,1 and…
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The American Civil War as a biological phenomenon: Did Salmonella or Sherman win the war for the North?
Michael BrownChicago, Illinois, United States Reexamining Civil War deaths A demographic historian, J. David Hacker, recently discovered an unfortunate truth; using newly digitized data from the 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses, he constructed new estimates of Northern and Southern Civil War deaths. In his pivotal analysis published in 2012, the death toll in the American…
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Mentally ill and Jewish in World War II
Mary SeemanToronto, Canada Introduction In 1928, my grandfather was admitted to the Clinic for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases in Vienna for a recurrence of the manic-depressive illness he had suffered from since youth. The clinic director was Julius Wagner-Jauregg who one year earlier had been awarded the Nobel Prize for fever treatment of third stage…