Tag: Infectious Dieases
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Shingles
JMS PearceHull, England The physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the second century AD described a painful skin eruption that typically followed a band-like or “girdle-like” pattern, which corresponds to the dermatomal pattern of shingles.1 The Greek word herpein means “to creep,” and zoster (Latin cingulum) means a girdle or belt, referring to the rash’s unilateral…
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Book review: A history of vaccines and anti-vaxxers
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Infectious diseases have been a scourge throughout human history. The first recorded epidemic was of the plague that occurred in Athens from 430–427 BC, chronicled in the writings of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. In nineteenth-century Britain, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, smallpox, and cholera were major…
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Sulfonamides: The first synthetic antibacterial agents
Few discoveries in medicine have a more interesting history than the introduction of the sulfonamides into clinical medicine.1 I feel somehow part of this process only because, having suffered from some febrile illness as a little boy, I distinctly remember being given a medicine that went by the name of “rubiazol” and turned the urine…
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Girolamo Fracastoro and syphilis
JMS Pearce Hull, England In 1924, London’s National Gallery received a bequest from the Mond family, an oil painting titled Portrait of Girolamo Fracastoro, attributed to Titian about 1528. What special attributes of a Veronese physician made him a suitable subject for the renowned artist Titian? Girolamo Fracastoro or Hieronymus Fracastorius (1483–1553) became famous because…
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Echinococcus granulosus, the sheepdog worm
In the days when Britain ruled the waves and its colonies, some sheep from Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and other counties followed their masters to the antipodes instead of stupidly jumping off a cliff.1 They multiplied in the sun and produced much wool, some of which was later returned to England under the imperial preference system…
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Rabies, still a deadly disease
The man recovered of the bite,The dog it was that died!—Oliver Goldsmith Unfortunately, this is untrue! An estimated 60,000 people die each year from rabies and most cases are due to dog bites. Rabies affects largely the poor rural populations of Africa and Asia, in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka and Thailand, the…
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“Satturday” by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who helped introduce smallpox inoculation to England
Cristóbal Berry-CabánFort Liberty, North Carolina, United States Lady Mary Wortley Montagu1 was born in 1689 to an aristocratic family. She was highly intelligent and self-educated by having access to her father’s library, studying the classics, and even learning Latin. In 1712 she rejected her father’s choice and eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu, a young Whig…