Tag: Howard Fischer
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Nurse Helen Repa takes charge in a disaster
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It would not be possible to praise nurses too highly.”– Stephen Ambrose, American historian On July 24, 1915, the Western Electric Company, a technology and engineering giant, had arranged an excursion and picnic for several thousand of its employees. Five Great Lakes excursion boats had been chartered to take them to a…
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Dr. Maria Nowak-Vogl and the Innsbruck Child Observation Station
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “[It was] a home, a prison, and a testing clinic.”– Description of the Child Observation Station by a former inmate Maria Nowak-Vogl (1922–1998) earned her MD degree from the University of Innsbruck, Austria in 1947, her doctorate in psychology in 1952, and the status of specialist in neurology and psychiatry in 1953.…
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George Orwell: An attempt at a diagnosis
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It’s better to die violently and not too old…‘natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.”– George Orwell, “How the poor die,” 1946 Many readers of the English author George Orwell (1903–1950) know that he died of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). He wrote Animal Farm, 1984, four other novels, three…
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William P. Murphy Jr., MD: Physician-inventor
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…An unqualified success.”– Dr. Murphy on the testing of blood bags during the Korean War It is perhaps no coincidence that the son of the physician who revolutionized the treatment of pernicious anemia should likewise have been an inventor. By the time he died in 2023 at the age of 100, Dr.…
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Spirit possession in Jewish folklore: The dybbuk
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden In the folklore of both Eastern European and Mediterranean Jews, a certain kind of possession was considered a real threat. A demon called a “dybbuk” was a malicious, possessing spirit, believed to be the soul or ghost of a dead, sinful person. The dybbuk was almost always the spirit of a Jewish…
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Dr. Davis discovers desirable dietary decisions
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “[Clara Davis did] one of the most fundamental and far-reaching pieces of work that has been done in my time.”1– Dr. Joseph Brennemann (1872–1944), chief of pediatrics, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago Clara M. Davis (1878–1959) received her M.D. degree in 1901. While practicing pediatrics in Chicago, Illinois in the 1920s, she thought…
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James Ensor’s Bad Doctors
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Je crois être un peintre d’exception.” (I believe myself to be an exceptional painter.)1– James Ensor The Belgian artist James Ensor (1860–1949) used his paintings as social criticism. He despised the church, courts, judges, lawyers, art critics, civil authorities, and doctors.2 He saw them as self-satisfied members of an elite that ignored…
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Book review: The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Well, son, I’ll tell you:Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”– Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son” At the start of the twentieth century, Dr. Hermann Biggs, chief of the New York City Department of Health, declared that tuberculosis (TB) was a reportable communicable disease. The city would be able to count…
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Louis Jolyon West, M.D.: A dangerous doctor
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”– The Nuremburg Code, Section on Permissible Human Experiments (1946)1 Louis J. West, M.D. (1924–1999), was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor immigrant family. He enlisted in the US Army during World War Two, was sent to medical school at the…
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Saving the starving Soviets with Spam
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands.”1– Nikita Khrushchev In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. The “breadbasket” agricultural regions of Southern Russia and the Ukraine were quickly occupied, causing a food crisis for the USSR. Russian soldiers’ food rations consisted…