Tag: Oliver Twist
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Charles Dickens and his doctors
Charles Dickens, one the greatest authors in the English language, featured in his novels medical doctors, students, and related professionals. They do not play an important role in his plots, but are interesting because they exemplify how medical practice was conducted two hundred years ago. Some of his doctors were benevolent and generous, others incompetent,…
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The birth of Oliver Twist
From the book by Charles Dickens, chapter one: “Although I am not disposed to maintain that being born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist…
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Pushing back at perceptions of epilepsy: The interplay between medicine and literature in three 19th-century British novels
Laura FitzpatrickNew York, United States If I wished to show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience, I would give him the history of epilepsy to read.—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 18911 As the nineteenth century dawned, the average Briton still understood epilepsy much in the way his ancient Greek counterpart had: as…