Tag: George Dunea
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Siberia medical
Siberia is a vast expanse of forests, tundra, and remote settlements that covers 5.1 million square miles of land and stretches from the Urals to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the southern steppes. It encompasses roughly 77 percent of Russia’s territory but remains sparsely populated. Approximately 36 million people reside in Siberia, primarily…
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The great hospitals of Paris
Few cities have shaped Western civilization as profoundly as Paris, the “city of light”. For over 500 years, until the mid-twentieth century, Paris was the undisputed center of European culture, encompassing art, literature, and philosophy. Historians trace its early history to 451 CE, when Saint Genevieve saved it from the Huns, and to about 500…
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The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore
The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore spans centuries of healing activities derived from indigenous traditions, colonial influences, and scientific advances. Long before the colonial era, local communities practiced herbal medicine using ingredients derived from the tropical rainforest’s flora, using methods passed down through generations, often combining herbal remedies with rituals, incantations, and divination.…
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Hesiod: The creation of the world
Even the most educated members of our generation who have read many of the ancient Greek classics may not be familiar with Hesiod’s works, the Theogony and the Works and Days. Written at about the same time as Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad (around 700 BCE), they reflect the Greek rather than the Hebrew or Mesopotamian…
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Early medicine in Australia
Eighteen years after James Cook landed in Australia in 1770, the First Fleet arrived, carrying convicts, marines, and physicians. The colony’s surgeons faced overwhelming challenges—starvation, malnutrition, and disease—in a climate much unlike Britain’s. Dr. John White, the principal surgeon, recorded in his journals the “fevers, fluxes, and scorbutic afflictions” that plagued both prisoners and guards.…
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The early Medici in Florence
The history of the beautiful city of Florence dates to the early Middle Ages and is intertwined with that of the remarkable Medici family. Their very name suggests a medical origin, and legend has it that an early Medici was physician to Charlemagne. As early as the 1200s, Chiarissimo di Giambuono (de’ Medici) is reported…
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Isaac Disraeli: Curiosities of Literature and other publications
Benjamin Disraeli (1766–1848), the famous prime minister of England, described his father Isaac as a great disappointment to his parents. He was a “difficult and rather morose child … pale and pensive, with large dark brown eyes, and flowing hair…timid, susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, and seeking no better company than a book.”…
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Chicago’s vanished hospitals
Hospitals, like their patients and their doctors, do not last forever. They close their doors and vanish into history. In Chicago, they failed because their patients moved to the suburbs, methods of reimbursement changed, and medicine itself keeps on evolving. Most of the hospitals listed here were not too long ago in the forefront of…
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The Latest Decalogue
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) Thou shalt have one God only; who Would tax himself to worship two? God’s image nowhere shalt thou see, Save haply in the currency: Swear not at all; since for thy curse Thine enemy is not the worse: At church on Sunday to attend Will help to keep the world thy friend: Honor thy parents; that is, all From whom…