Tag: Middle East
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The Great War and the other war
Maryline Alhajj Beirut, Lebanon Starving man and children in Mount Lebanon. 1915–1918. Unknown photographer. Via Wikimedia. Public domain due to age. The reverberations of October 29, 1914 would carry throughout the lands of the Ottoman Empire and serve as an ominous premonition of disastrous years to come. On that day, following a surprise…
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Hope
Rima Nasser Beirut, Lebanon Cedar tree of Lebanon. Originally located atop the police and investigative branch building in Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut. Photo by an anonymous photographer. 2021. Private collection. Modified from the original by Rima Nasser. Published with permission. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not an incendiary rant about…
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Disaster code
Nohad Masri Beirut, Lebanon Aftermath. Artwork by Hala Masri, August 2020. It was six in the evening and we were finishing our hematology board virtual meeting. Because COVID-19 cases were again on the rise, the hospital staff was working at half capacity, with the other half at home. The chemotherapy unit patients had finished…
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Lebanon during the catastrophe
Najat Fadlallah Beirut, Lebanon Julian Maamari Rochester, Minnesota, United States Abeer Hani Beirut, Lebanon Hope in the catastrophe. Drawing by Najat Fadlallah. After several chaotic cycles of resuscitation attempts, the twenty-something-year-old woman was pronounced dead. This was less than half an hour after a massive blast shook the heart of Beirut, Lebanon on the…
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Lebanon: a thumbprint in medicine
Jonathan Mina Beirut, Lebanon Fig 1. Dr. Debakey, holding the MicroMed-DeBakey VAD (ventricular assist device) with one of his heart transplant patients, David Saucier, a NASA Johnson Space Center engineer. Photo by NASA. July 29, 2013. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0. Lebanon is a country that has long developed and exported physicians and other…
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Return to Lebanon
Elie Najjar Nottingham, United Kingdom View of Lebanon from an airplane window. Photo by Elie Najjar. “Dear passengers, we will be arriving soon at Beirut International Airport.” We had indeed arrived in Lebanon, the land also called Leb-Uh-Nunh and other names before that. Mesopotamians called it Chaddum Elum or “the fields of God.”1 The…
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Tobias and the Angel—Miracle or medical?
Elizabeth Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Admirers of Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting Tobias and the Angel (circa 1470–1475) may be unaware of the purpose of Tobias’s journey with the archangel Raphael. The Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha posits a story of love and not-so-miraculous healing in seventh century B.C. Nineveh. Tobit, a devout Hebrew, suffers…
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America’s Arab refugees: Vulnerability and health on the margins
Richard ZhangNew Haven, Connecticut, United States Arab refugees, like others throughout history, have grappled with issues of somatic and mental health, cultural belonging, and fertility. Timely and eye-opening, Marcia Inhorn’s America’s Arab Refugees is the first anthropological book to focus on the aforementioned refugees and their barriers to health. This work is exemplary in its…
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Medical education in medieval Islam
Sara AliGainsville, Florida, United States The period between the 5th to the 15th century, known in Europe as the Dark Ages, was characterized in the Middle East and the Arab world by the rise of great civilizations. It was built by people of differing religions and ethnicities, Muslims and non-Muslims, working under the umbrella of…