Tag: Greece
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A brief history of kidney transplantation
Laura Carreras-PlanellaMarcella FranquesaRicardo LauzuricaFrancesc E. BorràsBarcelona, Spain We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated to 1550 BC and discovered…
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Asclepius at Epidaurus
L.J. SandlowGeorge DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States An Athenian seeking a cure for his afflictions in the fourth century BC had the option of visiting several competing sanctuaries, at Delphi, Olympia, or Epidaurus. To reach Epidaurus, the Athenian would bypass Megara and Corinth, then turn south and find himself at the shrine of Asclepius, the son…
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Great expectations
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece “Doctor, I want you to treat her as a forty-year old!” What is the appropriate answer to a demand like that from a daughter about the treatment of her eighty-eight-year-old mother? Any suggestion that her mother might not do well even with the best treatment in the world is anathema to her.…
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The beginnings of humane psychiatry: Pinel and the Tukes
JMS PearceHull, England “It is perhaps not going too far to maintain that Pinel has been to eighteenth-century psychiatry what Newton was to its natural philosophy and Linnaeus to its taxonomy.”—George Rousseau, Historian, 1991 Although modern treatment of mental illness has its limitations, older methods of treatment were both crude and cruel. For centuries they…
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Brief encounters
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Doctor-patient relationships are as unique as the potential pairs of doctors and patients. At one end of the spectrum there is the one-time encounter, usually for some straightforward and self-limiting problem: the doctor may never see the patient again. At the other extreme, a lifelong bondage of chronic conditions may bring the…
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Preparing for the unexpected
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Working in specialist medical practice one is familiar with the spectrum of clinical problems likely to appear in one’s regular professional menu. However, it is common knowledge that unexpected situations do occur: the human body and being is complex and unpredictable, organ systems work interdependently and not in isolation, and we must…
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A traditional practice in baby care: salting
Sinem ÇakaSakarya, TurkeySümeyra TopalKahramanamaras, TurkeyNursan ÇınarSakarya, Turkey In many societies, there are traditional practices performed to protect babies from magic, witchcraft, or the evil eye. At first, it may seem that these practices would have no particular effect on health. Some of these traditions bring psychological relief for the family, but some may delay the…
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Erasistratus
Erasistratus (304–250 BC) founded a school of anatomy in Alexandria, where he described the valves of the heart; concluded that the heart functioned as a pump; and distinguished between arteries and veins. He believed that the arteries were full of air and that they carried the “animal spirit”; appears to have almost discovered the circulation of the blood; and carried…