Tag: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
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Touch wood
Loshini RajentharanLiverpool, United Kingdom When I was a house officer in a tertiary hospital in northern Malaysia during my four-month orthopedic rotation, I witnessed something that changed the way I viewed a particular aspect of medicine. Superstitions. I have always loved the color black. Even… Read more
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The clinician who taught us to see: Remembering Prof. Kolitha Harischandra Sellahewa
Shane HalpeMoratuwa, Sri Lanka Professor Kolitha Harischandra Sellahewa entered my life in 2015 during my final-year professorial appointment in medicine at the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital in Sri Lanka. Students spoke of him with a mixture of awe and fear: he was said to be… Read more
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Věc Makropulos and the ownership of immortality
David HoganCalgary, Alberta, Canada Karel Čapek (1890–1938) was an eminent Czech author, playwright, and journalist active during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938).1 The son of a physician, Čapek suffered from ankylosing spondylitis (during the 1930s it was known as Čapek’s disease in Prague).2 This excused… Read more
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“Neurasthenia” and the concealment of Woodrow Wilson’s strokes
Joseph LockhartSaty Satya-MurtiSanta Maria, California, United States The history of neurasthenia up to 1919 Physician George Beard (1839–1883) introduced the term neurasthenia1 as a popular construct to the United States, publishing his book American Nervousness in 1881.2 The disorder was seen as a peculiarly American illness,… Read more
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Mount Kilimanjaro: Geography, history, and medical significance
Mount Kilimanjaro is located 330 kilometers south of the equator in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border, rising to 5,895 meters (~19,341 feet) above sea level. It stands alone and is not part of a mountain range, which makes it the tallest mountain on Earth.… Read more
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Assassins changed the fate of nations
The assassination of a single prominent person has often changed the fate of nations. Throughout history, rulers of all kinds—kings, emperors, and presidents—as well as reformers and revolutionaries, have fallen prey to the weapons of assassins, sometimes marking the end of an era or the… Read more
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“The hunchback”: Literary and historical perspectives
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel In the Bible, we read that “a man with physical deformities or ailments, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles” (Leviticus, 21:20) was not… Read more
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The Red Sea: Delights and dangers
The Red Sea, wedged between Africa and Arabia, stretches from the Suez Canal to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean, it is believed to have been formed by the separation of the African and Asian tectonic plates. Its extreme climate… Read more
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Something fishy about vegetarians, carnivores, and longevity
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel “I did not become a vegetarian for my own health. I did it for the health of the chickens.”—IB Singer, Nobel Laureate in Literature There is an association between being a vegetarian and voting on the left side of politics. Various… Read more
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“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” — The most famous four words in exploration history
On the morning of November 10, 1871, a disheveled group of men emerged from near Lake Tanganyika after an eight-month expedition through the jungle, led by an American journalist, Henry Morton Stanley. As they came across a thin, gray-bearded Scotsman, Stanley removed his hat, extended… Read more
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Ethiopia: Where once the Lion of Judah ruled
Ethiopia, one of the oldest continuously inhabited nations on earth, remained largely independent during the colonial era of Africa. Its earliest known civilization was the Kingdom of D’mt, which emerged around the eighth century BCE. It was later followed by the powerful Kingdom of Aksum,… Read more
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Charles Norris and the evolution of forensic medicine
Zo Overton-HennessyNoel BrownleeBlacksburg, Virginia, United States “His work makes dead men tell more tales than live ones ever could.”1 These words, though hyperbolic on the surface, understate the influence Dr. Charles Norris had on forensic medicine. His rigorous attention to detail set the innocent free,… Read more