Tag: Fall 2024
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Paolo Sarpi: Venetian hero, Roman heretic
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Though an obscure figure today, for many years Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) loomed large in the ecclesiastical, scientific, and political arenas of Europe. Macaulay praised him as his “favorite modern historian,”1 Boswell called him a genius, and Samuel Johnson considered translating him to the English-speaking world. A venerable polymath, he…
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In memoriam: James Parkinson
JMS PearceHull, England The 21st of December 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Dr James Parkinson (1755–1824), author of An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. He was buried in St. Leonard’s church where a marble plaque elegantly summarising his life and work was unveiled in September 1955. Further reading JMS PEARCE is…
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Aequanimitas
JMS PearceHull, England Amongst many books and essays devoted to the ideology and practice of medicine in its widest sense, William Osler’s Aequanimitas1 stands out as a classic. Influenced by Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, published in 1686, Osler’s Aequanimitas with Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practitioners of Medicine was published in 1904.…
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Pietro Grimani: Venetian Doge and Fellow of the Royal Society (1667–1752)
Pietro Grimani was one the most cultured of the 120 Doges who served as chief magistrates and leaders of the city and republic of Venice for more than one thousand years. Born into an ancient aristocratic family that had held essential positions in Venetian society, he had studied the classics as a young man, including…
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Reminiscences of a medical student in Australia
Some years ago a tourist shown the shopping Galleria in Milan asked the guide why the ceiling paintings illustrating the world’s continents did not include Australia. The guide explained that Australia had yet to be invented. She was clearly misinformed in that the British had established the penal colony at Botany Bay some one hundred…
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Whose name is writ in water: Life, serendipity, and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva
Carol Zapata-WhelanFresno, California, United States “… I guess [the grass] is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass I sank down in a padded chair to wait for my routine bone…
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The Turk’s Head Literary Club
Elizabeth SteinhartJMS PearceHull, England We share a fascination for the varied activities, relics, and quirky names of eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries’ gentlemen’s clubs and societies. One of us (ES) recently found the blue plaque of the Turk’s Head Literary Club above a Chinese supermarket in London’s Soho. Distinguished literati, physicians, and scientists were members of such…
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Paul Farmer, MD (1959–2022)
Paul Edward Farmer was an American medical pioneer anthropologist, academician, and physician. He co-founded and was chief strategist of Partners in Health (PIH), an international nonprofit organization that since 1987 has provided health care services, undertaken research, and advocacy on behalf of the poor and sick. Dr. Farmer grew up in Alabama during much of…
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The Art of Medicine is the essence of medical professionalism
Patrick FiddesAustralia The art consists in three things—the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art.1 Among the 412 aphorisms in Francis Adam’s Genuine Works Of Hippocrates2 are three that employ the term “Art.” Two have achieved popular acclaim while the third, the “Art of Medicine,” has received fewer…
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Margaret Mead (1901–1978), controversial anthropologist pioneer
Margaret Mead is remembered as one of the most important, though controversial, anthropologists of the twentieth century. She became famous through her classic work Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), in which she described the life and sexual practices of teenagers on two Samoan islands in the South Pacific. Her books were widely read and…