Tag: Literature
-
Premature burial in literature
Nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being buried alive, of being wrapped in a shroud, bound hand and feet, with no way to escape. This thought has long haunted human imagination. It was a real possibility before and during the 17th to 19th centuries, when numerous documented cases of premature burial, both verified…
-
The novels of Karl May: Myth, adventure, and cultural impact
Karl May (1842–1912) remains one of the most popular and widely read authors in the German-speaking world, renowned for his prolific output of adventure novels that captivated generations of readers. Although his name is less familiar outside of Europe, his imaginative works—particularly those set in the American West and the Middle East—have left a lasting…
-
Middle Ages, Middlemarch, and the mid-twentieth century: Idealism at risk
William MarshallTucson, AZ The dissatisfaction with modern medicine felt by both patients and doctors occurs despite unprecedented advances and successes in disease treatment and prevention. Corporate Medicine (huge healthcare conglomerates that control much of medical care) and Big Pharma (giant research, development, and sales entities) are understood as prime exemplars of monopolistic greed. Income disparity…
-
The Call of the Wild and COVID-19
Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York, United StatesSamantha RizzoWashington DC, United States The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a terrible toll upon all of us and has brought the medical system—and the providers who inhabit it—to its knees. There is a tradition in medicine, following Sir William Osler’s “Aequinimitas,” of compassionate detachment: as physicians or trainees, we…
-
Carl Gustav Jung
Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension, but the snow-capped peaks of his beloved Alps soothed him…
-
Somerset Maugham
JMS Pearce Hull, England I have two professions, not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress; when I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.—Anton Chekov, 1888 As a graduate who abandoned medicine in favor of writing and other careers ranging from poetry to piracy, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)…
-
“Scarlet letters” — The depiction of scarlet fever in literature
Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland Scarlet fever, named for the erythematous skin rash that may accompany streptococcal infections (Fig 1), is often considered a disease of Victorian times. Associated with high levels of morbidity and mortality (up to 25%) when epidemics were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the US,1,2 it is seen less…
-
Dirty, dark, dangerous: Coal miners’ nystagmus
Ronald FishmanChicago, Illinois, United States It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,Where the danger is double and pleasures are fewWhere the rain never falls and the sun never shinesIt’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine. From the song “Dark as a Dungeon” – Merle Travis Nystagmus is a repetitive oscillation of the…