Tag Archives: Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy and medicine

September 29, 2022

JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Novum Organum Scientiarum, 2nd edition, 1645. EC.B1328.620ib, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced. – Alexander Pope, 1741   The early seventeenth century was a time when natural philosophy, the precursor of modern […]

Art and alcohol

June 25, 2021

Giovanni Ceccarelli Roma, Italy   Fig. 1. Drinking Bacchus. Guido Reni, 1623, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Via Wikimedia. In the late 1940s Elaine de Kooning, wife of one of the most eminent exponents of American abstract expressionism (Willem de Kooning), commented that the whole art world of her time had become alcoholic. Yet even earlier, perhaps […]

Pursuing “conclusions infinite”: The divine inspiration of Georg Cantor

April 12, 2021

Sylvia Karasu New York, New York, United States   Georg Cantor, German mathematician, 1845–1918. Cantor as an older man, date unknown. Cantor was not quite age 73 when he died of heart failure. Photo Credit: Colport/Alamy Stock Photo. Used with permission. There is a “fine line between brilliance and madness”: the distinction, for example, between […]

Plain Words, or pandemic medical gobbledygook

November 23, 2020

JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1: Comic featuring Plain Words The great essayist and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) once said: “Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past.” I suggest that the problems posed by writers who fail to convey meaning are not new.1,2 As long ago as […]

Canadian contributions to the study of pathology

June 12, 2020

Guillermo Quinonez Laurette Geldenhuys Nova Scotia, Canada   John George Adami, Head of the Department of Pathology, McGill University, Quebec, Canada, author of The Principles of Pathology. Wikipedia Canadian and American medicine in general, and pathology in particular, have developed in parallel and in synchrony since the nineteenth century. Despite Canada’s limited population, scientific cultural […]

The past and future of blood banking

February 4, 2020

Eva Kitri Mutch Stoddart Saigon, Vietnam   Image from “Clysmatica nova: sive ratio, qua in venam sectam medicamenta immitti possint, ut eodem modo, ac si per os assumta fuissent, operentur: addita etiam omnibus seculis inaudita sanguinis transfusion,” Artist: Elsholtz, Johann Sigismund (1623–1688), 1667. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Blood oozes allure. The elixir of life, viscous […]

The basilisk—a cause of sudden death

February 1, 2017

Anna Lantz Einar Perman Stockholm, Sweden   Mythical creatures have been described and feared since ancient times. The group is large. It includes dragons, sirens, basilisks, centaurs, phoenixes, sea monsters, and several more. These mythical creatures may have been invented to provide explanations for events for which there were no natural explanations, such as when […]

William Harvey

January 27, 2017

Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States William Harvey (1578-1657)   The impression that William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the closed circulation of the blood is not entirely accurate, although after Harvey there was never any doubt about it. Regardless of what credit you ascribe to him, it is clear that his research benefited from more […]