Tag: George Dunea
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Lord Melbourne (1779–1848): Mentor of Queen Victoria
Lord William Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s well-known prime minister, descended from the great landed aristocracy that had ruled Great Britain for most of the eighteenth century. Some of their members had sat in Parliament for many years, including one who never opened his mouth during his forty-year tenure.1 For most of his life, Lord Melbourne had…
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The deaths of the Romantic poets
The deaths of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, all occurring within five years of each other, form a tragic trilogy in the history of English Romantic poetry. Each died young, and their ends reflect the turbulence, idealism, and fragility that marked their youthful spirits as well as an era in English poetry.…
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Gustav Klimt (1862–1918): Medical aspects
The renowned Austrian painter Gustav Klimt lived and worked in Vienna during a period of unprecedented medical advances. The capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had become a world center for innovation in clinical medicine, therapeutics, and surgery. It had also become the site of a new understanding of psychiatry and psychology, in great part due…
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The very prejudiced H.L. Mencken and his medical views
A century has gone by since Henry Louis Mencken wrote his diatribes, some of which he actually called Prejudices, now highly distasteful and taboo. He himself was born in Baltimore in 1880, spoke only German as a child, and during both wars thought the Germans should win. He studied at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and…
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Potpourri Bolognese
Bologna is a frequent site for meetings by nephrologists. It is a lovely northern Italian city, easily accessible by air or by train. From the railway station, an easy walk under covered arcades takes the visitor to the center of town, to the San Petronio Cathedral, the two medieval towers, and to a modern shopping…
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Caravaggio: Beauty and crime intertwined
Born in Milan in 1571 and orphaned by the plague in 1577, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio made his way to Rome in 1592, where he enrolled the lowlife of the city, its prostitutes, thieves, and other undesirables, in order to paint the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and the Apostles and saints of the New Testament and…
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Titian: The mastery of color and the perils of paint
Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/90–1576) hailed from Pieve di Cadore, near Venice. He trained first in the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato and subsequently with the acclaimed Giovanni Bellini, while his close relationship and collaboration with the influential Giorgione greatly shaped his early style. Titian’s early commissions included the Scuola di San Antonio frescoes in…
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The Celts, early inhabitants of Europe
The Celts, a collection of Indo-European tribes, shared common linguistic and cultural traditions. They controlled extensive territories across Europe from 1200 BCE to 400 CE, spanning from Ireland and Scotland to Anatolia and from the Netherlands to Spain and Italy. Greek and Roman observers frequently wrote about the Celts in negative terms but also expressed their admiration for them. The main Celtic…
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Sir Edward Elgar, pioneer of English music
Sir Edward Elgar raised English music to prominence at a time when it was dominated by continental composers. Renowned for his The Dream of Gerontius oratorio (1900), Enigma Variations (1899), the Pomp and Circumstance marches (1901–1930), a Violin Concerto (1910), a Cello Concerto (1919), two symphonies, and many other compositions, he became one of the…
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Dr. David Hosack, physician to Alexander Hamilton
In the early 1800s, when Napoleon had established his hegemony over most of Europe but was utterly ignored by Jane Austen in her novels, barber-surgeons took care of most of the bodily needs of their clients. They shaved their beards, pulled their teeth, drew their blood, lanced boils, applied leeches, and amputated limbs if necessary.…