Tag: Fall 2022
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Middle Ages, Middlemarch, and the mid-twentieth century: Idealism at risk
William MarshallTucson, AZ The dissatisfaction with modern medicine felt by both patients and doctors occurs despite unprecedented advances and successes in disease treatment and prevention. Corporate Medicine (huge healthcare conglomerates that control much of medical care) and Big Pharma (giant research, development, and sales entities) are understood as prime exemplars of monopolistic greed. Income disparity…
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Book review: The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK Classical antiquity has long been a subject of human fascination. The time period covered in this book ranges from around 1000 BCE to 650 CE. The editors have produced an encyclopedic volume of essays from scholars worldwide, resulting in a comprehensive source of information about the history of science and medicine…
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Wernicke-Korsakoff encephalopathy: A historical note
JMS PearceHull, England Before Sergei Sergeivich Korsakoff described the psychosis that bears his name, Carl Wernicke reported a closely related and often coexistent syndrome. It is variously named Wernicke-Korsakoff encephalopathy, syndrome, or psychosis. Two more different personalities would be hard to imagine. Wernicke’s encephalopathy The crucial clinical account of Wernicke’s encephalopathy is found in the…
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A celebrated occasion
Eli EhrenpreisChicago, Illinois, United States She arrives at the office early, looking as if she stepped from a portrait. Her blue eyes glimmer with tears. “My gynecologist has been treating me for hemorrhoids, but the bleeding has been getting worse. It started when I had my boys.” This is not usually a serious problem at…
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“My dear neoplasm”: Sigmund Freud’s oral cancer
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United states When the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, died in London early on the morning of September 23, 1939, he succumbed to what he wryly referred to as “my dear old cancer with which I have been sharing my existence for sixteen years.” Freud had been discovered to have carcinoma…
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Please don’t die in the hospital
Alexandra DeFeliceFalls Church, Virginia, United States I don’t like the way people die in the hospital. I don’t like the color schemes, the paleness that seeps into every empty wall, every window shade, every floor tile; every cafeteria counter, every elevator sign, every parking lot stripe—the paleness, the sterile acceptance, that appears, eventually, in every…
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Rapamycin: The “fountain of youth” from Easter Island?
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “We know more about the movement of the celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.”—Leonardo DaVinci In November 1964, the Canadian naval vessel HMCS Cape Scott left Halifax, Nova Scotia, to make a medical evaluation of Easter Island. The expedition was led by surgeon Stanley Skoryna and medical microbiologist Georges Nógrády,1,2 and…
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Physicians and photosynthesis
JMS PearceHull, England The importance of plants in nutrition and in the environment of human and animal species needs no emphasis. How plants obtain their food and how they grow were unsolved mysteries until photosynthesis was discovered. It was generally believed that plants obtained food and energy directly from the soil alone. Three medical doctors…
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International adoption of Greek “orphans”
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “He’s only a pawn in their game.”1—Bob Dylan Between 1950 and 1962, 3,200 Greek children were adopted by American couples. The Greek Civil War (1946–1949) had begun after Nazi occupation of Greece ended. Western countries supported the Greek government against the communist rebels.2 After so many years of war, there were orphans…
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The pediatric pioneer and his finger
Ciara O’NeillDublin, Ireland One of the most intriguing statues in the Graves Hall of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin is that of Sir Henry Marsh (1790–1860). Alongside the three other memorials in the hall—to Robert Graves, William Stokes, and Dominic Corrigan—Marsh poses purposefully with his right arm stretched forward and index…