Alexis Carrel: the sunshine and the shadow
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Alexis Carrel. Unknown photographer. 1912. From Popular Science Monthly Volume 81, on the Internet Archive. Via Wikimedia. Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his […]
Dr. Aufderheide and the mummies
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Curator for the Department of Physical Anthropology at the San Diego Museum of Man prepares a 550-year old Peruvian child mummy for a CT scan. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Samantha A. Lewis/Released). Via Wikimedia. Public Domain. Paleopathology, the study of early animal […]
Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau and aeration of the White Plague
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Photo from the Adirondack Experience Museum. Circa 1895. Edward Livingston Trudeau was born in 1848, one year before Frédéric Chopin died of tuberculosis. Trudeau’s extended family eventually included Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, and Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. In his time tuberculosis was killing […]
Did Ernest Hemingway have the Celtic curse?
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1954. GPA Photo Archive. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0 Considering Ernest Hemingway’s mishaps before he died in 1961 by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, it is surprising that he lived so long. He survived two plane crashes several days apart that left […]
The death of James Abram Garfield
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States James Abram Garfield. By Ole Peter Hansen Balling. 1881. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public Domain. The medical treatment of some US presidents and ex-presidents has been controversial. One example is George Washington, who in 1799 at age sixty-seven suffered from an acute throat ailment that was treated […]
John Caius, the polymath who described the sweating sickness
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States John Caius (1510-1573), Master of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 1563. Unknown painter. Credit: Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. Imagine being a physician in a rural community in England in the mid-sixteenth century, always concerned with the reappearance of the Black Death. Late one summer you […]
Philosophy of science and medicine series — IV: Alexandrian period
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Euclid Ptolemy The Alexandrian tradition was first manifested in the Royal Museum in Alexandria, established by the Ptolomies who ruled […]
Philosophy of science and medicine X: Aristotle to the early 20th Century
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Aristotle What is natural law? There are certain values in human nature that can be understood through human reason. This implies the use of reason to evaluate binding rules of moral behavior. Inherent in the use of reason, from the Greek philosophers onward, at least in Western Civilization, […]