Tag: Gynecology
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Lawson Tait, father of aseptic surgery and gynecology
Robert Lawson Tait was fifth in a dynasty of pioneers who helped transform surgery from a primitive craft to a sophisticated life-saving art. They all worked for a time at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary—James Syme (the “Napoleon of Surgery”), Robert Liston (“time me, gentlemen”), James Simpson (“made childbirth painless”), and Robert Lister (“antiseptic surgery”)—and with…
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Salernitan women
Vicent RodillaAlicia López-CastellanoValencia, Spain The first medical school in the Western world is thought to be the Schola Medica Salernitana (Figure 1), which traces its origins to the dispensary of an early medieval monastery.1 The medical school at Salerno achieved celebrity between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, before it was overshadowed by universities at Bologna…
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Thomas Keith: Pioneer photographer and pioneer surgeon
Iain MacintyreEdinburgh, Scotland “His success so far outstripped that of all other operators, that it became a wonder and admiration of surgeons all over the world.”1 So wrote J Marion Sims (1813–1883), arguably the most famous American surgeon of the 19th century and often described as the father of surgical gynecology.2 Sims was describing the…
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Ephesus and its renowned physicians
L.J. SandlowGeorge DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States To visit the extensive ruins of Ephesus is to step back into the beginnings of history. The city had been founded by Ionian Greek colonists in the tenth century BC. It prevailed after an early turbulent history and was prospered initially as an independent city-state. After its conquest around…
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Heartbreak in the nursery
Shruthi RavishankarChennai, India I began the long drive to the pediatric hospital on a route peppered with traffic jams and incessant honking. Some of my medical school classmates simply do not attend the rotation, but I always make it a point to go. It is fun to see the smiling babies and their proud mothers…
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Howard Kelly’s avant-garde autopsy method
Julius BonelloGeorge TsourdinisPeoria, Illinois, United States Once dubbed the “Prince of Gynecology,” Dr. Howard A. Kelly was one of the most prominent surgeons in the United States in the early twentieth century.1 Through the blessing of Sir William Osler, Kelly had risen to the rank of Head of Gynecology at Johns Hopkins Medical School at…
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Origins of the Pap smear
When Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou brought his wife to America in 1913 he had $250 in his pocket. Both had to take menial jobs, she as a seamstress, he as a rug salesman, violin player in a restaurant, and clerk at a Greek newspaper. A year later, he obtained a position as laboratory technician at Cornell…
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Lessons learned from the Greeks: The physician-patient relationship in Hippocratic Gynecology
Jenna NickasNew Brunswick, NJ, USA The medical treatment of women in Classical Greece was a topic not overlooked by the Hippocratic tradition. Much of the Corpus addresses the health of women, especially Epidemics and Diseases of Women. Within this genre two things are certain: all patients were female and all doctors were male. Many clinical…
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Loyal Davis, legendary neurosurgeon (1896–1982)
For more than thirty years, in an era less politically correct than ours, Dr. Loyal Davis reigned supreme as chief of surgery at the Northwestern University medical school in Chicago. He retired in 1963, but stories about him persisted as lively subjects of conversation and amusement, to be told with relish at meetings and dinner…