Tag: Fall 2022
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Morning rounds
Alan BlumTuscaloosa, Alabama, United States During my internship, residency, and fellowship in the late 1970s, I kept a visual journal, filling several notebooks with patients’ stories, clinical vignettes, snippets of overheard conversations, and sketches. The two collages in this gallery, drawn in my usual medium of black ballpoint pen on small index cards, depict patients…
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The origins of NIH medical research grants
Edward TaborBethesda, MD, United States The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports medical research in non-government universities and hospitals and some small businesses. The cost and scope of these grants significantly exceed those of NIH’s own intramural program of clinics, wards, and laboratories. The NIH extramural grants today provide more than $37 billion1,2 for…
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Erik Waller the book collector
Anna LantzStockholm, Sweden Erik Waller (1875–1955) was a Swedish surgeon and book collector who spent most of his professional life in Lidköping, a small town in the southwest of Sweden. He received his medical education in Uppsala and Stockholm before moving to Lidköping in 1909, where he was offered a position as acting hospital doctor.…
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Emperor Claudius and his physician, Xenophon of Kos
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Drusus Nero Germanicus, Emperor of Rome from 41 to 54 CE, though known to historians, became a household name in 1970 with the advent of the popular television series I, Claudius. But he had already gained attention several decades earlier, engendered by British author Robert Graves,…
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Love and syphilis: The marriage of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Nicolas Roberto Robles Diego Peral Caceres, Spain Figure 1. Portrait of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer. Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. ¡Cuánta nota dormía en sus cuerdas, como el pájaro duerme en las ramas, esperando la mano de nieve que sabe arrancarlas! How many notes sleep in its…
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Gonzalo R. Lafora: Spanish neuropsychologist and neuropathologist
Enrique Chaves-CarballoOverland, Kansas, United States Gonzalo Rodríguez-Lafora (1886–1971) was a Spanish neurologist best known for his description of intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies (Lafora bodies) in myoclonic epilepsy. Lafora was born in Madrid on June 25, 1886. At the age of four, he moved to Puerto Rico when his father became a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish…
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The role of doctors in the intellectual life of Spain
“One of the aspects of Spanish intellectual life which struck me repeatedly was the fact that civic leadership so often rested in the hands of medical men. They wrote the best books, made the most daring statements and were revered as the elements of society that could be trusted to support good movements. The doctors…
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Famine and illness in War and Peace
The Pavlograd regiment had lost only two men wounded in action, but famine and sickness had reduced their numbers by almost half. In the hospitals death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling caused by bad food, preferred to remain on duty, dragging their feeble legs to the front, rather than…
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“All hands to dance and skylark!” – Shipboard dancing in the British Navy
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia “We were all hearty seamen, no cold did we fear;And we have from all sickness entirely kept clear;Thanks be to the Captain he has proved so good;Amongst all the Islands to give us fresh food.”1,2– William Perry, surgeon’s mate on H.M.S. Resolution, 1775 Lieutenant James Cook (1728–1779) is known as a…