Tag: George Dunea
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Milk in medicine
The mammary glands are believed to have originated as glands in the skin of synapsids. These were the predecessors of mammals some 300 million years ago, and the function of their skin glands was to provide moisture for the eggs they were laying. When mammals came on to the scene, the function of the mammary…
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Theodor Zwinger (1533–1588)
To the twentieth century tourist, the name Zwinger brings to mind the beautiful palace built in Dresden in 1709 by King Augustus the Strong of Saxony. In German, Zwinger means an open area between two surrounding walls built to defend a city. But none of these have anything to do with Theodor Zwinger. He was…
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Thomas Dover, physician and entrepreneur (1660–1742)
Oh, Dover was a pirate and he sailed the Spanish MainA hacking cough convulsed him and he had agonizing pain.So he mixed himself a powder, which he liked more and more.Ipecac and opium and K2SO4 1 Thomas Dover was an English physician who in 1732 invented a patent medicine known as “Dover’s Powder.” It consisted…
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Friedrich Wöhler (1800–1882)
When the proteins of the human body are broken down to their constituent amino acids, they are converted to ammonia (NH3), which, being toxic, is metabolized in the liver to urea. As the main nitrogenous end product of proteins, urea is found mainly in the blood, but to some extent also in bile, milk, and…
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Richard Wiseman, “father of English surgery”
Richard Wiseman lived in the turbulent seventeenth century that devastated Western Europe by its internecine conflicts. Germany was torn apart by the Thirty Years War, France by the rebellion known as the Fronde, and England by the Civil War that culminated in the execution of its monarch in 1649. In 1665 London was devastated by…
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Adolf Bastian, pioneering anthropologist
Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology, born June 26, 1826, in Bremen, Germany. This multicultural port city exposed him to many different cultures and customs, eventually igniting his interest in studying different societies. From his father, who belonged to a well-known merchant family, he inherited a strong instinct for business…
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Kenelm Digby, polymath and inventor of the wound salve
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) was not a physician but came close to practicing medicine. He published in 1658 a treatise called A Late Discourse … Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy. It consisted of treating dueling wounds, as proposed by Paracelsus, with a “wound salve,” a mixture of powdered earthworms, iron…
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Sanitariums as cure for consumption
The institutions variously called sanitariums (from sanare, “to cure”) or sanitariums (from sanitas, meaning “health”) became all the rage around 1850. They were especially popular with the upper classes, as exemplified in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain by the young Hans Castorp, who decides to spend a few days with a friend at a Swiss…
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The gift of the Medici
Credit for the present status of Florence as a jewel of European art and culture is rarely given to where it is due. Accounts of its history are replete with descriptions of the founder of the Medici’s wealth, Giovanni de’ Bicci; the exploits of Cosimo, pater patriae; the splendor of Lorenzo the Magnificent; and the…
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Theophile Bonet, physician and anatomist of Geneva
Theophile Bonet was a scholar and physician remembered for his extensive writings on anatomy, pathology, and clinical medicine. A successful medical practitioner for over forty years, he was familiar with both ancient and modern literature, and he published extensive notes of his studies and observations. Bonet was born in 1602 in Geneva, where his Protestant…