Tag: Fall 2017
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Foundations of anatomy in Bologna
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Home to the oldest western university,1 the University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and was a center of intellectual life during the Middle Ages, attracting scholars from throughout Europe. The University began as a law school. Medical teaching started circa 1156 and was taught in Latin translations, principally based on…
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The “English Hippocrates” and the disease of kings
Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) is known as “The English Hippocrates” because of his detailed physical examinations, painstaking record keeping, and attention to the treatment of illness.1 At a time when the medical profession espoused theory and systemization, his belief in the power of observation and primary experience over scientific theory…
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George Orwell and the ethics of dealing in or dealing with cigarettes
Lynn T. KozlowskiBuffalo, NY, United States Early in World War II, George Orwell wrote the essay “England, my England,” commenting that as he was writing “highly civilized human beings” were flying overhead trying to kill him: They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing…
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Alabama and the healing of memories
Jack Coulehan Stony Brook, New York, United States T.S. Eliot’s poem “Burnt Norton” begins with the famous lines: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past.” 1My memories are a part of my present experience. I recall clinical experiences of all sorts, good…
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To my friend with diabetes, on losing her foot
Anna KanderIowa City, IA, USA You walk sixty-seven years while childhooddiabetes, against your iron will, poisons your peripheralnerves with sugar, and the muscles of your feet, starvedof circulation, gradually dissolve. Your toes gnarl and curl backward at wildangles, as if aspiring to adorn gargoyles. (You’vealways had a dragon-and-knight heart.) Unruly tendonsdraw themselves into bows, aiming…
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Death and the diaspora
Amitha KalaichandranOttawa, Ontario, Canada Even though my grandfather, or “Tata” in Tamil, became deaf five years ago, I still felt he could hear me. I believed that the oceans that stood between our homes – mine in Toronto, Canada, and his in Colombo, Sri Lanka – could carry a symphony of both concerns and excitement,…
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The thousand-year-old rainforest shamanistic tradition of healing touch
Søren VentegodtCopenhagen, Denmark An interview with the last Aboriginal healer from the Kuku Nungl (Kuku Yalanji) tribe on the sacred art of healing touch in Far North Queensland, Australia. The indigenous people of Australia, the Aboriginals, have an ancient tradition of healing that uses only talk, touch, and other active principles. In contrast to the…
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Phantom pains
Daly WalkerBoca Grande, Florida and Quechee, Vermont, United States Most memories pass on to oblivion without changing anything. But some are so powerful they transform who you are. They never leave you. Without my memories of a girl named Jane, I would never have become the doctor I am. On a clear December morning fifty-six…
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Why are most babies born at night?
“Obstetrics is not the pleasantest of medical occupations, although it pays well and is one of the things that the young physician with any kind of practice can count on as a as financial backlog. Yet it takes a great deal of time and means a lot of night work. While the statement may not…