Tag: hypertension
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Sir George Pickering and the low salt diet
Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London, UK. Photo by Enric likes Funk. 2008. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. As a young man George Pickering was interested in his native Northumbrian countryside and intended to study agriculture. Persuaded later to read for a degree in biochemistry or physiology, he…
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Did Ernest Hemingway have the Celtic curse?
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1954. GPA Photo Archive. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0 Considering Ernest Hemingway’s mishaps before he died in 1961 by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, it is surprising that he lived so long. He survived two plane crashes several days apart that left…
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Felix Mendelssohn, musical prodigy
Oil portrait of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, painted in 1846 by Eduard Magnus. From the Berlin State Library. Via Wikimedia. Felix Mendelssohn made his musical debut at age nine. Born in Hamburg in 1809, he came from a distinguished German family that moved to Berlin in 1902. His grandfather and father had been successful businessmen who…
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Harry Goldblatt and the kidney
Dr. Harry Goldblatt. 1964. Via the National Library of Medicine. In 1928 Dr. Harry Goldblatt applied silver clamps experimentally to the renal arteries of dogs and observed a significant and sustained rise in blood pressure. His main interest as a researcher was to find a cause for hypertension, a disease for which effective treatment was…
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The Emberá of Panama
L. J. Sandlow George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States The Emberá are an indigenous people who live near the Panama-Columbia border. There are about 33,000 living in Darién, Panama, and 50,000 in Colombia. Until 1960 most lived in extended family settlements along the rivers. Since the 60s many have moved together into small villages,…
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The search for Eisenhower’s adrenal tumor
Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States Figure 1. Letter to KRL from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology For most Americans, the knowledge of Dwight Eisenhower’s health history is limited to the fact that he had a serious heart attack while president. However, a seemingly casual comment by a non-physician political scientist, Robert…