Tag: Fall 2022
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Hemiplegic migraine, the monster
Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico The authors of great literary works allow their readers to enter into the very precincts of their imaginations, leading them to the most fantastical places they could have ever imagined. Sadly, however, the authors who create these magical works are just as prone to suffer from the same terrible…
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Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Baghdad physician and polymath
Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873), the “sheik of the translators,” was an influential Christian translator, scholar, physician, and scientist who lived in Baghdad at the height of the Abbasid civilization. He was very learned and spoke four languages: Arabic, Syriac, Greek, and Persian. Traveling to the Greek Byzantine Empire in search of manuscripts, he translated works…
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Margery Kempe: Medieval visions, delusions, and hallucinations
Margery Kempe (c. 1393 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic who dictated autobiographic notes to a scribe. Married when twenty years old, she had a postpartum psychotic episode after the birth of her first child and went through at least fourteen subsequent pregnancies. Psychotic symptoms, delusions, and hallucinations continued all her life. She had…
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Gently, Doctor, tell me what you see
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In order to emphasize the role of the arts when teaching the humanities in medicine, I have often taken medical students, residents, and doctors to art museums to develop the art of looking. During one such program for medicine residents at the Reading Public Museum, we looked at a work…
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Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape
Mirjana Stojkovic-Ivkovic Belgrade, Serbia The Rape. Oil painting by René Magritte, 1934. Menil Collection, Houston, TX, via Wikiart. Fair use. When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and…
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Palo Seco: A leper colony in Panama
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas Fig 1. Indian 50 paisa stamp shows Armauer Hansen at work in his laboratory. Via Wikimedia. Copyright Post of India, licensed under the Government Open Data License. The history of leprosy goes back to antiquity and is replete with unscientific prejudices, including the belief that the disease was highly…
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The adenoid riots of 1906
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Sagittal section of nose mouth, pharynx, and larynx showing the adenoids, or pharyngeal tonsils (in green). Not to be confused with the tonsils in the back of the throat. From Grays Anatomy, 20th edition. Bartleby via Wikimedia. Public domain. On June 28, 1906, thousands of Eastern European Jewish women surrounded…
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Faith in medicine
Tyler Beauchamp Augusta, Georgia, United States Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash. When I was in college, I worked for a nursing unit in the trauma ward. One patient had been in a horrible car accident and barely survived. I visited her for the better part of two weeks before she began to improve.…
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The Joys of Motherhood: The classic Nigerian novel
Oyenike Ilaka Albany, New York Cover of The Joys of Motherhood, published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979.2 The Joys of Motherhood is a Nigerian novel written by Buchi Emecheta in 1979. Emecheta was a Nigerian woman from the Igbo tribe. Born in 1944, she spent her childhood in Lagos. At…
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Diocles of Carystus
Diocles of Carystus (probably 375–300 BC), also known as Diocles Medicus, came from the island of Euboea but is remembered as a resident of Athens. He wrote on animal anatomy, dietetics, physiology, embryology, and medical botany, but only fragments of his writings survive. His work on anatomy may have been the first of its kind…