Tag: Michael Ellman
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Stamping out preventive medicine
Michael EllmanWilmette, Illinois, United States In 1965, I became the Chief Preventive Medicine Officer of the United States Southern Command. One of the eleven unified commands of the Department of Defense, the Southern Command was headquartered in the Panama Canal Zone and represented our interests in South America, Central America, excluding Mexico, and the Caribbean—but…
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The story of a scar
Michael EllmanWilmette, Illinois, United States The six-inch scar is high over my left femoral artery in my inner thigh. It is healing well now and is pain free. The scar marks the place where a vascular surgeon extracted a clot that was blocking the popliteal artery. “I fished it out for you,” he told me.…
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Anosognosia
Michael Ellman Chicago, IL, United States “Joseph Cable, at your service! U.S. Marines, World War Two, retired—at ease, Doctor. Let’s be casual, shall we?” My patient is tall and ramrod stiff, his hair an isthmus of bristle above his forehead. The psychiatry unit interview room is small—a tired square table and two wooden straight-backed chairs. The…
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Mark Hanna’s knees and the Panama Canal
Michael EllmanChicago, Illinois, USA Aficionados of the history of the Panama Canal know that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Nicaragua was to be the site for the “American” inter-oceanic canal. A Nicaraguan canal would be hundreds of miles closer to ports in the Gulf of Mexico…