Tag: New York
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Compassion in the emergency room
Raymond BellisStony Brook, New York, United States Yet another shift in the Emergency Department—between the frenzied rush of staff, the constant pinging of monitors, and the chaotic overhead announcements, I didn’t find the environment particularly conducive to healing. But as a dedicated student in my third year of medical school, I eagerly picked up a…
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The adenoid riots of 1906
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden On June 28, 1906, thousands of Eastern European Jewish women surrounded and attacked twelve public schools in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.1 The community where they lived was an “unbearably crowded, unhealthy, and impoverished urban neighborhood.”2 The Danish-American photographer, journalist, and social reformer Jacob Riis wrote that “nowhere in the world…
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Andersonville, Georgia and Elmira, New York: When Hell was on Earth
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”— Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy When the American Civil War (1861–1865) began neither the Union nor the Confederacy gave much thought to housing prisoners-of-war (POWs). Eventually, the two opposing sides had a total of about 120 POW camps.1 The two armies had captured a total of…
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Anatomy of the Araimandi
Shreya SrivastavaAlbany, New York, United States Bharatanatyam is one of the oldest dance forms theorized in text. Originating in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Bharatanatyam dates to an estimated time of 500 BC when it was first described in the Natyashastra, an ancient book based in Hindu philosophy that specifies the physical, social,…
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“Am not I a fly like thee?” Drosophila melanogaster and the human genome
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States Animal models have been essential to medical research for millennia. Ethical concerns about their use has led to a decrease in use of large animals (e.g., dogs, cats). Perhaps the smallest of research animals is Drosophila melanogaster, a fruit fly, one tenth inch in length, which has contributed…
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On beauty and medical ethics
John Eberly Jr.Anderson, South Carolina, United StatesLydia DugdaleNew York, United States Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing, partaking, creating. Beautiful things invite participation; we find ourselves lingering and listening long. We leave inspired and moved to respond. As artists and poets have…
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The year gross anatomy faced the scalpel
Michael DenhamNew York, New York, United States As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, anatomy departments across the United States struggled to develop contingency plans to continue training the country’s future physicians. Would this year’s class of 22,239 medical students be the first in American history who could not learn gross anatomy on cadavers?…
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Eye-brain-extremity coordination and enduring sports achievement
Marshall LichtmanRochester, New York, United States Neuroscientists have imaged the brain of athletes, looking for changes related to the sports they played, whether principally aerobic or anaerobic. These efforts have suggested expansion of the gray matter in certain anatomical areas of the brain in elite athletes. These analyses have been crude by necessity, as the…
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Memories of a West Virginia coal camp
Calvin KuninColumbus, Ohio, United States This is a brief account of my experience as a physician at a coal mining camp in rural West Virginia. It is based on my memory of events that took place almost seventy years ago but remain vivid in my mind. The adventure began the day I graduated from medical…