Tag Archives: Peter Kopplin

From eponym to advocate: The story of Stephen Christmas

January 22, 2020

Peter Kopplin Toronto, Canada   Picture of Stephen Christmas. Courtesy of Robin Christmas The 1952 Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) had an unusual but fitting article. It was titled “Christmas Disease, a condition previously mistaken for haemophilia.”1 The seminal patient was five-year-old Stephen Christmas and the title suggested an unusual lack of […]

Theme

October 2, 2019

THE GLORY OF FRANCE Published in September 2019 H E K T O R A M A   .     ARCHITECTURE AND THE FRENCH HOSPITAL       Parisian hospitals, like those in many European capitals, are the results of years of accretion. Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest Parisian hospital, was founded by Saint Landry in […]

Ernest Black Struthers: missionary life, kala azar, and military strife

April 19, 2017

Peter Kopplin Toronto, Canada     Kala azar disease In 1934 the third edition of Cecil’s A Textbook of Medicine contained a chapter by an academically obscure missionary in China.1 Russell Cecil, still editing the book by himself with only the help of a neurology colleague, chose Ernest Black Struthers to write about kala azar […]

Monet and his cataracts

January 24, 2017

Peter Kopplin Toronto, Ontario, Canada   Claude Monet, photo by Nadar, 1899 In January 1923, the elderly artist Claude Monet struggled restlessly in his room after his cataract surgery. He got up and tore at his bandages.1 His family put it down to his temperament. But an elderly man in his eighties, immobilized, recovering from […]