Tag: Moments in History
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Edward Jenner and the dairymaid
Smallpox has plagued mankind since time immemorial, causing huge epidemics with great loss of life and often changing the course of history. The disease could be prevented or ameliorated by variolation, the subcutaneous inoculation with fluid from smallpox lesions into non-immune individuals. Variolation had been used for centuries, even for members of royal families. It…
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Healthcare for the popes
Guy de Chauliac was the personal physician of three of the seven popes forced to reside in Avignon during their so-called Babylonian captivity. Although he wrote a famous textbook on surgery, he practiced mainly as a physician, and reportedly wielded the knife mainly to embalm the bodies of dead popes but was careful to avoid…
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Doctor bites policeman in Chicago religious dispute
The episode took place in Chicago about half a century ago. At the time some 100,000 Ukrainians lived in the greater Chicago area, mostly in a near-west neighborhood referred to as the Ukrainian village. They were mostly (c.70%) Catholics of the Byzantine or Eastern rite, adhering to the old Julian calendar and celebrating Christmas and…
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The King’s-Evil and sensory experience in Richard Wiseman’s Severall Chirurgicall Treatises
Adam KomorowskiSang SongIreland Throughout many centuries, the monarchs of England maintained as royal prerogative the ability to heal the sick by virtue of their miraculous touch alone. William of Malmesbury (c.1090-c.1143) first described the use of the thaumaturgic touch by King Edward the Confessor (1003-66), who healed a woman afflicted with scrofula.1,2,3 While this power…
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A Norse and Dutch friendship
Jan VerhaveNetherlands The renowned pathologist Ludvig Hektoen maintained a vast correspondence with many people.1 The science writer Paul de Kruif was one of them. Their contacts started in 1925. Paul de Kruif was in trouble. In 1922, he had written a story on vaccines in Hearst’s International Magazine where he had accused the manufacturer of…
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What November may bring: The first 37 days of surgical anesthesia
A.J. WrightBirmingham, Alabama, United States In medical history October 16 is known as “Ether Day” to commemorate dentist William Morton’s 1846 demonstration of ether inhalation for a surgical patient of Dr. John Collins Warren. The event is often described as the first public ether anesthetic because it took place before an audience of physicians and…
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Changing conceptions of the nightmare in medicine
Brian SharplessUnited States In contemporary parlance the word “nightmare” conjures up images of a scary dream that leaves us shaken and afraid. This fear usually subsides when we wake and realize that we are actually safe in our own bedroom. However, the original conception of the “Nightmare” was much more vivid and terrifying, even seen…
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The Hogmouths of Habsburg
Craig BlackstoneBethesda, Maryland, United States Coins are miniature works of art. Since portraits of prominent individuals have graced coins for millennia, images forged in precious metals in the distant past can represent disease even now. Indeed, the earliest artistic depictions of disorders such as goiter and trichoepithelioma were on ancient Greek, Roman, and Parthian coins.1…
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A tale of two cities: Swedish roots of electrophoresis
Frank WollheimLund, Sweden My title refers to two Swedish hospitals: one in Uppsala with its old and famous university, the other in Malmö, where academic activity started only in 1950 but soon acquired fame thanks to some charismatic leaders. My teachers, Jan Waldenström and Carl-Bertil Laurell, both started training in Uppsala, but crowned their career…