Tag: Howard Fischer
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Jeremy Bentham: Dead but not gone
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “How little service soever it may have been in my power to render to mankind during my lifetime, I shall at least be not altogether useless after my death.”1– Jeremy Bentham The English polymath Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. His collected works started to be assembled in…
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Pippi Longstocking: Escapist fiction for children, a clinical case description, or a feminist icon?
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Think for yourself is the mantra she whispers in children’s ears. Don’t believe the teachers, the police, the child welfare workers…”1– A resumé of Pippi Longstocking’s philosophy Pippi Longstocking (or Pippi Långstrump in the original Swedish) is a fictional nine-year-old girl. She has great self-confidence, superhuman strength, and much joie de vivre.…
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Women’s equality in the Viking era: The tooth tells the truth
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Women had “relatively free status” in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark during the Viking Era (700–1000 AD), based on the criteria of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.1,2 For instance, paternal aunts, nieces, and granddaughters had the right to inherit property. In the absence of male relatives,…
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Honeymoon rhinitis: My love is like a red, red nose
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “I’m pretty sure that…you will admit that a good rousing sneeze…is really one of life’s sensational pleasures.”– Robert Benchley (1889–1945), American humorist “Honeymoon rhinitis” is a condition that includes nasal congestion, sneezing, and rhinorrhea (runny nose) during sexual arousal or sexual intercourse.1,2 Men and women are both affected. The first report of…
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Agatha Christie’s poisons: Better dying through chemistry
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Everything is a poison. Nothing is a poison. It is all a matter of dose.”– Claude Bernard, French physiologist (1813–1878) Agatha Christie (1890–1976) wrote sixty-six detective novels, fourteen collections of short stories, and three plays. She is the best selling fiction writer ever published, with two billion books sold. Her works have…
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The Manneken Pis: Still peeing after all these years
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Belgium’s culture of excretion goes back centuries.”1– Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, art historian and professor at the University of Paris Artists in the low countries did not hesitate to depict human bodily functions. The great Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569) had scenes of defecation in his paintings2 in the sixteenth century. The…
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The seventeenth-century plague doctor’s hazmat suit
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “There are plagues, and there are victims, and it is the duty of good men not to join forces with the plagues.”– Albert Camus, The Plague The plague (later called “the black death”) reached Europe from eastern Russia in 1346. By the time the epidemic ended in 1352, one-third of Europe’s population…
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Looking for lice in seventeenth-century art
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “As far as we can ascertain, since man has existed the louse has been his inseparable companion.”1 Bathing, and even washing the hair and the face, were not common practices in seventeenth-century Europe. Children and adults of every social class, from the “the most privileged, to the poorest teemed with lice.”2 Head…
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The smell of dystopia: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “It’s a sad commentary on our age that we find Dystopias a lot easier to believe in than Utopias: Utopias we can only imagine, Dystopias we’ve already had.”—Margaret Atwood Brave New World1 is a science fiction novel about a high-tech, controlling dystopia. It is clearly a satire. Nineteen Eighty-Four2 is a story…
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The problem with drinking (water) on airplanes
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink.”– The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) In the year 2020, 4.5 billion people flew on commercial aircraft. The previous year saw US airlines carry over 900 million passengers, and only 13% of Americans had never flown on a plane.1 Water is…