Tag: medical history
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Frankincense and myrrh: Medicinal resin worth more than gold
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States Boswellia and Commiphora trees are scraggly, sharp, and unfriendly. Growing close to the ground in the arid desert, they have short trunks and fanning branches, sometimes looking more like shrubs than trees. But despite their unlikely appearance, they once served as the cornerstone of an ancient trade.1 When cut or…
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The revolution of Abraham Flexner and its aftermath
Unlike his brother Simon, who became a celebrated infectious diseases specialist and director of the Rockefeller Institute, Abraham Flexner was mainly interested in culture and education. He also grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where his father had ended up after an odyssey that had taken him from Bohemia to Strasbourg, to New York, to New…
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Girolamo Cardano: Renaissance physician and polymath
Born at Pavia in the duchy of Lombardy in 1501, Girolamo Cardano practiced medicine for fifty years but is remembered chiefly as a polymath. He composed 200 works, made important contributions to mathematics and algebra, invented several mechanical devices (some still in use today), and published extensive philosophical tracts and commentaries on the ancient philosophers…
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Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie: William James Mayo (1861–1938) and Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939)
John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States The father of the Mayo brothers, William Worall Mayo, was born in a village near Manchester, England, in 1819. His father died when he was seven years old, but his mother managed to have him tutored in Latin and Greek, and later he took private lessons with James Dalton, a…
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Teddy Roosevelt: Did a speech really save his life?
Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Teddy Roosevelt uttered those words outside the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, shortly after he was shot by…
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Abraham Colles—Giant among surgeons
Abraham Colles was born in Kilkenny in Ireland in 1773. The story has it that as a boy he found an anatomy book in a field after a flood had destroyed a doctor’s house. He took the book to his owner, a Dr. Butler, who, finding he was so interested in it, let him keep…
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Another look at the medical problems of Jean-Paul Marat: Searching for a unitary diagnosis
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) was a practicing physician, scientist, and a leader of the French Revolution. He also suffered from a chronic, intractable skin condition, which troubled the last five years of his life. A tormenting itch caused him to spend whole days1 in his custom-made bathtub, from which he wrote revolutionary articles…
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Phillipe Gaucher (1854-1918)
In the days when syphilis was rampant in Europe and diagnostic modalities few, many unrelated medical conditions were erroneously attributed to it. There was, for example, the distinguished professor of syphilology and dermatology at the Hôpital Saint-Antoine and the University of Paris, who “aggressively promoted” the idea that poliomyelitis and appendicitis were due to syphilis.…
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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…