Tag: Fall 2023
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Aphorisms from Latham
Peter Mere Latham, born in 1789, was appointed physician to the Middlesex Hospital at the age of 26 and elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians three years later. He joined St Bartholomew’s in 1827 and became physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria in 1837. His writings, published between 1828 and 1846, have long ranked…
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The Doctors’ Riot of 1788
Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States In the wake of the American Revolution, slavery remained a key part of the United States’ economy. Even the northern states were not exempt; in the waning years of the eighteenth century, slaves made up nearly 20% of the population of New York City alone.1 As a 2011 Lancet article…
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The financial affairs of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
After more than 200 years, the music of the great genius Mozart has remained unsurpassed and the interest in various aspects of his life continues unabated. Most medical authorities now believe that he died from Henoch-Schönlein nephritis with severe edema, hypertension, and neurological complications in the form of a stroke.1 There is perhaps less agreement…
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Whale tales: Old and new
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Oh, are you from Wales? Do you know a fella named Jonah? He used to live in whales for a while.”– Groucho Marx The biblical story of the prophet Jonah and the whale is well known. Jonah does not want to accept a mission God has given him. He flees, boards a…
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Wilfred Harris and periodic migrainous neuralgia
JMS PearceHull, England The turn of the twentieth century marked an era when throughout Europe clinical neurology was evolving rapidly as an erudite specialist discipline based mainly on clinicopathological observations and correlations. Its English leaders were John Hughlings Jackson and David Ferrier followed by Henry Charlton Bastian, William Gowers, and Victor Horsley. By the 1920s,…
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The lady in red
Mary Liz OvercashGalveston, Texas, United States The long-term care facility was tucked in the back of a strip mall, behind restaurants and sporting goods stores, as if someone had hidden it away. As I wandered through the halls looking for my patient’s room, I didn’t see a single other person. I knocked softly on the…
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Denis Burkitt, surgeon and epidemiologist (1911–1993)
At the age of forty-three, Denis Burkitt acquired eponymous immortality by having an important disease named after him. Born in Northern Ireland in 1911, he received an early education in a highly religious family that emphasized prayer, study of the Bible, and service to others. At age eleven he suffered a serious accident when someone…
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Dr. William Shippen, surgeon and educator in colonial America
William Shippen Jr. (1736–1808) was a prominent medical person in early American history. Born in Philadelphia in 1736, he came from a well-connected family and received his training at the University of Edinburgh, at the time considered the best medical school in the English-speaking world. He returned to Philadelphia in 1762, and with John Morgan…
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Mercury poisoning and the death of John Wilkes Booth
Matthew D. TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United StatesJason SappJoint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, United States Introduction On April 26, 1865, twenty-six soldiers of the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment surrounded a barn on the Garrett farm in Virginia. Hiding within the barn were two refugees, one of them the most wanted man in the United States, and the…
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The bizarre history of the bezoar
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “As for the bezoar [we removed] …we have restricted ourselves from employing its therapeutic power in the practice of medicine.”1– John Moffat, M.D. A bezoar is a compact mass of material that may be found in the digestive tract of mammals, including humans. Bezoars in humans may cause problems. Those found in…