Tag: lung cancer
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Tobacco in my time
Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland Doll and Hill’s 1956 publication1 linking smoking with lung cancer had one quick result—others were delayed by years. My school biology class displayed a cigarette butt among the specimens in our classroom, labelled “Fagendia cancercausia”. A year later when being interviewed for a place at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, most of my…
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The man shackled on 4 Northwest
Andria AlbertTucson, Arizona, United States In one of the patient rooms tucked into the Northwest (NW) wing of the fourth floor of the hospital, there lay a particular man. Upon walking into his room, you would find nothing extraordinary about him. He is young, early thirties, with a head full of curly brown hair and…
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Occupational lung malignancies: Role of malachite
Tamas F. MolnarKatalin AknaiHungary To this very day, malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) remains a serious oncologic, public health, and industrial challenge, a fatal disease in which standard chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy has done little to increase the chance of survival.1-6 While the role of asbestos exposure in the pathogenesis of the disease is seemingly…
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Monet’s illnesses: Beyond cataracts
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, USA Fig. 1: Claude Monet, Apple Trees in Blossom, 1872, Union League Club of Chicago. Fig. 2: Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge, ca. 1922, Modern Museum of Art New York. No other artist in the world is more beloved than Claude Monet (1840-1926), the father of French Impressionism. From Shanghai…
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Shostakovich and his mysterious neurologic disease
For most of his life Dmitri Shostakovich lived under the shadow of Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator of the Soviet Union. In 1936, Stalin and some members of the Politburo attended a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Stalin did not like it. The next day, the opera was criticized, denounced, and ridiculed in…
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On your doctor’s orders
Alexandria SzalanczyWinston-Salem, North Carolina, United States Long before physicians faced a nation crippled by an opioid crisis, their predecessors lived and worked in a nation dominated by cigarettes. By 1953, 47% of Americans smoked cigarettes, including half of all physicians.1 These physician smokers were particularly instrumental to the rise of the cigarette in America. Beginning…
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A love story
Kate RowlandChicago, Illinois, United States “Is that her partner in there with her?” Ankita, a second-year resident, and I had just finished seeing a new patient, Marian. Marian’s detailed problem list had required an equally detailed visit, and Ankita had addressed her urgent issues: uncontrolled diabetes, cirrhosis, and stage 3 congestive heart failure. As a…
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Three Visits
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Prelude She rings at the recommendation of a colleague who knows my interest in lung cancer and palliative care. “It is about my father, doctor.” I suggest that she brings me his films and tests for a briefing before I get to meet him. We arrange an appointment, and she comes with…