Tag: Hygeia
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Handmaidens of anatomy
Elisabeth BranderSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Some of the most well-known images in the history of anatomy are the woodcut écorché figures that appear in Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543. Rather than lying inert on a dissection table, they stride boldly through a pastoral landscape as if still alive, showing their…
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Morris Fishbein, MD—foe of four-flushers, flimflammers, and fakes
Laura KingAtlanta, Georgia, United States Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 1889, and raised in Indianapolis, Morris Fishbein emerged from his humble origins as the second eldest of eight children born to a Jewish immigrant tin peddler (Benjamin Fishbein) and his wife (Fannie Fishbein) to become the preeminent physician of his generation. After…
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Gymnopédie
Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, UK Oblique et coupant l’ombre un torrent éclatantRuisselait en flots d’or sur la dalle polieOù les atomes d’ambre au feu se miroitantMêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie [English translation]: Slanting and shadow-cutting a bursting streamTrickled in gusts of gold on the shiny flagstoneWhere the amber atoms in the fire gleamingMingled their sarabande…
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The feast of health: the Christian legacy of Hygeia
Wilson F. Engel, IIIGilbert, Arizona, United States Michelangelo’s famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel (Figure 1) shows the serpent tempting Eve on the left, and the archangel Raphael expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden on the right. The image oddly enough shows the serpent having a female face, its massive body doubled…
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Hybridity in Hong Kong: The Tung Wah Hospital
Angharad FletcherHong Kong, China In his 1895 government report on the recent outbreak of bubonic plague, Dr Philip Bernard Chenery Ayres, last Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong, berated the Tung Wah Hospital for its dangerous and insanitary conditions. Ayres listed the many “medical and surgical atrocities” he had witnessed within the walls of this “menace…
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Oaths, codes, and charters in medicine over the ages
L.J. SandlowChicago, Illinois, USA Introduction Medical oaths are solemn pledges taken by medical students as they complete their training and enter the practice of medicine. Oaths and codes summarize the profession’s mission to protect and restore human health. Taking an oath is the hallmark of a physician’s commitment to his profession. Present in all the major…
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Philosophy and Medicine
Roger PadenVirginia, United States In 1894, Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch received a commission to create a series of paintings that were to be installed on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the New University of Vienna. Eleven years later, in the midst of an increasingly bitter scandal, Klimt was forced to take back…