Tag: Leo Tolstoy
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Famine and illness in War and Peace
The Pavlograd regiment had lost only two men wounded in action, but famine and sickness had reduced their numbers by almost half. In the hospitals death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling caused by bad food, preferred to remain on duty, dragging their feeble legs to the front, rather than…
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Deserving but unrecognized: the forty-first seat
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States The Nobel Prizes Each year on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish royal family recognize the individuals deemed to have made the greatest achievements in chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, and literature; and the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognizes “the person…
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Placebo effect or care effect? Four examples from the literary world
Pekka LouhialaRaimo PuustinenFinland It is common knowledge that patients may exhibit improvement following an encounter in which no specific drugs or effective medications were prescribed. Indeed, even fictional doctors have often been depicted as knowing that their patients may require no active drugs and that their mere presence, their advice and encouragement, will often lead…
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Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and the five stages of grief
Katharine LawrenceFlorida, United States Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. “Vermiform appendix! Kidney!” he said to himself. “It’s not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and . . . death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it.…