Tag: Fall 2023
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Healing beyond the sterile chamber
Brody FoglemanSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States A senior resident once shared with me: “Patients don’t heal in the hospital; they get sicker. Our goal is to stabilize, medically optimize, and discharge.” Though I was surprised by such a statement, it became truer the more patients I encountered as a medical student. A patient admitted, a…
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Charlotte Gilman, Weir Mitchell, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived a complex and controversial life.1 A prolific writer and lecturer, she advocated for the social, economic, and civic liberation of women.1 She was also a nationalist, eugenicist, and white supremacist.1 Despite her prominent feminist role, “today, Charlotte is primarily remembered for her haunting story [‘The…
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Charles Dickens and the Victorian perception of blindness
Curtis MargoLynn HarmanTampa, Florida, United States Charles Dickens (1812–1870), the most recognized English author after Shakespeare, left a legacy of fictional characters, many of whom are inseparably associated with the cruelties of the Industrial Age, poverty, and disability. On his first trip to America, Dickens went out of his way to meet Laura Bridgman (1829–1889),…
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Agatha Christie’s poisons: Better dying through chemistry
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Everything is a poison. Nothing is a poison. It is all a matter of dose.”– Claude Bernard, French physiologist (1813–1878) Agatha Christie (1890–1976) wrote sixty-six detective novels, fourteen collections of short stories, and three plays. She is the best selling fiction writer ever published, with two billion books sold. Her works have…
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Limping into victory
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel There were people with disabilities in history who were not “limping into oblivion,”1 but rather paved their way to accomplishments and victories.2 The emperor Claudius, who may have had cerebral palsy or dystonia, reigned in the first century AD. During that time, the Roman Empire expanded greatly. He decreed that if…
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Escargot—Fine dining
Escargot is the French word for edible land snails. It usually refers to the genus Helix (aspersa or pomatia), the members of which have been a delicacy enjoyed as food for many centuries. Their original ancestor evolved from a single cell organism almost a billion years ago. It was a marine organism until about 250…
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Eating chicken
The common chicken (Gallus domesticus) is a member of the Phasianidae family that also includes pheasants, partridges, quails, and turkeys. Its ancestor, the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) was domesticated in Southeast Asia and China before 7000 BC and was valued for its eggs and cockfighting prowess. This ancestor evolved in India around 2000 BC…
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The Manneken Pis: Still peeing after all these years
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Belgium’s culture of excretion goes back centuries.”1– Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, art historian and professor at the University of Paris Artists in the low countries did not hesitate to depict human bodily functions. The great Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569) had scenes of defecation in his paintings2 in the sixteenth century. The…
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Noah Webster’s war on words
JMS PearceHull, England “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” When Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (III.3) speaks this line, he reminds us of the singular importance of the use of words, and hence the need, even for medical writers, to refer continually to fine dictionaries. Noah Webster…
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Two composers named Arlen
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony,must investigate discord.”– Plutarch (AD 46–120), Demetrius, sec I Harold Arlen,1 composer of popular music, was born in 1905 in Buffalo, New York, as Hyman Arluck, the child of a Jewish cantor. After singing in a local synagogue choir, he…