Tag: History Essays
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Early observations of the pulse
JMS PearceHull, England Over the centuries, various devices bearing names now unfamiliar (Clepsydra, water clock, pulsilogium, Sphygmologia, Pulse Watch) were used to measure the pulse.The examination of the pulse to assist in diagnosis and prognosis dates back to ancient Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese physicians. Because they had little understanding of cardiovascular physiology, we might wonder…
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Hittite medicine
Some 3,000 to 7,000 years BC there lived in southern Ukraine or perhaps northern Anatolia a people we now know as the Indo-Europeans.1,2 They were the ancestors of most of the linguistically related nations of Europe and Western Asia, and eventually they split into Eastern and Western groups. The latter comprised the Hittites, a now…
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Anatomical correlation of the bronze liver of Piacenza with fresh sheep livers
Belle van RosmalenThomas van GulikAmsterdam, Netherlands The Palazzo Farnese in the town of Piacenza, Italy, houses an archaeological museum called the Musei Civici. Its collection includes an Etruscan model of a sheep’s liver cast in bronze, known as the Piacenza liver.1 (Fig 1) The Etruscans were an ancient civilization with a unique language, culture, and…
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Emperor Otto II, malaria, and aloe
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Holy Roman Emperor Emperor Otto II (AD 955–983) conquered the Saracens and quelled the invading Magyar menace. However, his ambitious reign abruptly ended, not in battle, but in bed. At the young age of twenty-eight, he departed from this world. Tradition maintains that a malarial fever caused his premature death.…
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“Dr. Jim” (Sir Leander Jameson): A hero and villain of the British Empire
Jonathan DavidsonDurham, North Carolina, United States If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you……If you can meet with triumph and disasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;…Yours is the Earth and everything’s that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”—“If” by Rudyard Kipling…
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Did Louis XVI have phimosis?
Matthew TurnerHershey, Pennsylvania, United States On May 16, 1770, Louis Auguste, the Dauphin of France and the future Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette, an Austrian archduchess.1 For the next eight years, the poorly matched couple failed to produce an heir, creating yet another source of political instability in France. It was not until December 19,…
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From healing to superstition and witchcraft
The roots of witchcraft can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, where the lines between religion, magic, and medicine were often blurred.1,2 Many healers combined herbal knowledge with rituals, charms, amulets, and incantations, and some were particularly proficient in using plants to cure illnesses, alleviate pain, or induce sleep…
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King Henry III of Castile, the Suffering
Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Henry III of Castile was called “the Suffering” (in Spanish, Enrique III el Doliente) because of his ill health. He was the son of John I and Eleanor of Aragon, born in 1379 in Burgos. Henry was the first person to hold the title of Prince of Asturias as heir to the…
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Touching for the King’s Evil
JMS PearceHull, England The old word scrofula is now seldom seen in medical writings. Nor are the words ague, buboe, and podagra. Despite their romantic, descriptive appeal, they have been swept aside by the jet stream of the current epidemic of maladroit, often high-tech words, phrases, acronyms, and initialisms. Scrofula, the “King’s Evil,” or “struma,”…