Tag: infectious disease
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A changing paradigm for medical research: the evolution of the clinical trial
Kayvon ModjarradBethesda, Maryland, United States This history of science follows a convoluted path of imperceptible intellectual drifts and sudden philosophical shifts. Scientific milestones are, therefore, the result of gradually building thought processes. This is as true for advances in the methods of scientific inquiry as it is for the content of scientific discovery. Tracing the…
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A disease of society: cholera through the ages
Khameer Kishore KidiaUnited Kingdom Cholera is something else, it is the invisible, it is the curse of the olden days, of times passed, a sort of evil spirit that comes back and that surprises us so much that it haunts us, because it belongs to what appears to be a forgotten age. Doctors make me…
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A Return to a Moralistic Perception of Disease: Prudence in the Time of Cholera
Lauren Lewis During the 1830s, a critical shift in thinking occurred about the causes of disease as medical practitioners increasingly shifted their views of causation towards the environment and away from morality and the individual. However, not all followed this shift in thinking, as evinced by Sylvester Graham, a deeply spiritual Presbyterian minister and dedicated…
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Outwitting “Typhoid Mary”
Lisa MullenneauxNew York City, New York, United States The Irish cook who infected at least forty-eight people with typhoid bacilli, three of whom died, had a surname and a history, but Americans remember her only for her germs. Mary Mallon’s physical stamina and quick wits had served her well as an immigrant struggling to survive…
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Tuberculosis—A journey across time
Mindy Schwartz Introduction Few diseases have captured the imagination more than tuberculosis (TB). Tuberculosis fascinates many people – scientists and epidemiologists, artists and humanitarians, sociologists and physicians. It is as much the stuff of art and song as a merciless killer of the young and old. Even its name conjures the image of the waif…
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Lament to measles
Nazan BilgelBursa, Turkey I am the sorrowful, dull winter sunResting silently on the naked branches of the treesWarming and soothingVillages, roads, and mountain stones.I saw a village far awayBehind the mountains, you couldn’t know So described the poet Ceyhun Atuf Kansu himself when he saw so many dying children because of measles.1 Although a simple preventable…
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Public health measures derived from the Jewish tradition
Noam ZeffrenTova CheinRobert SternNew York, New York, United States Jewish ingenuity has contributed widely to theology, philosophy, science, and many other areas of human endeavor. To the practice of medicine, influences from Jewish luminaries include Moses Maimonides, Sigmund Freud, Paul Ehrlich, and Jonah Salk. Less recognized are contributions from the Old Testament (or Torah) and…
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Lord Florey and the other war
Philip RyanSeattle, Washington, United States One of the most remarkable medical breakthroughs of all times occurred during the darkest days of World War II:1 the rediscovery of penicillin, which was mass-produced and disseminated to Allied troops, substantially reducing the number of deaths and amputations from infected wounds, and ushering in the dawn of the antibiotic…
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A Physician-Scientist’s odyssey at the dawn of AIDS
Russell TomarChicago, Illinois & Madison, Wisconsin, United States I had just returned from a sabbatical leave at the National Institutes of Health in April 1981 to my position in Pathology, Medicine, and Microbiology at the State University of New York in Syracuse when each of two Infectious Disease specialists asked me to consult on one…
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Matushka’s ordeal
Sarah IrawaParañaque City, Philippines Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette’s biographer, wrote of his heroine as “the most signal example in history in which destiny will at times pluck a human being from obscurity and, with commanding hand, force the man or woman in question to overstep the bounds of mediocrity.” The same could be said of…