Tag: Philip Liebson
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Martinus Beijerinck: A co-discoverer of viruses
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States As early as 1676, Dutch textile worker Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek, working with an early microscope, was the first to identify bacteria. Because of the size of bacteria, easily seen by a microscope, it was inevitable that bacteria would be discovered by someone. Not so with viruses. Although the smallest bacteria…
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Salvador Luria and the bacteriophage
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States In 1859, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that if an organism is changed by environmental stimuli, these changes would be passed on to offspring. This theory was eventually disproven. One important study disproving this concept led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Salvador Luria, Max Delbrück,…
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Encephalitis lethargica: The sweating sickness of the 1920s?
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Epidemics may come and go, magically disappear, and sometimes recur. An example of this was the “sweating sickness” of sixteenth century Europe. Another example closer to our time was encephalitis lethargica, occurring as an epidemic in the late 1910s and early 1920s followed by only sporadic cases. Sporadic cases of…
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Herophilus, the true father of anatomy?
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Although Andreas Vesalius has been considered the modern father of anatomy, long before his time there lived a Greek anatomist and physician, Herophilus (?335–255 BC), who was accused of human vivisection. He may be the true father of anatomy because of his contributions to the understanding and differentiation of organ…
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Did Chopin die from tuberculosis?
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Frederic Chopin, remembered for his brilliant piano works, suffered from a chronic illness leading to a short life of only thirty-nine years. Yet he lived longer than Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, or George Gershwin. Born in a suburb of Warsaw, he was sickly even as a youth and appeared on the…
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Justus von Liebig (1803–1873)
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States An extraordinary chemist, Justus von Liebig influenced the development of organic chemistry, scientific teaching of chemistry, and the application of chemistry to physiology and agriculture. He was one of the forerunners of the German educators who influenced the evolution to the outstanding scientific and educational standards of the late nineteenth…
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Dr. Bernard Lown
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Sudden death from cardiac dysrhythmias is a frequent consequence of acute myocardial infarction. Before the 1960s, little could be done to prevent it, and patients were usually confined to bed for several weeks. Ventricular fibrillation, the underlying cause of sudden cardiac death, was a frequent occurrence. In the 1950s, Dr.…
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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…
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Dr. Aufderheide and the mummies
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Paleopathology, the study of early animal and human artifacts, offers a historical perspective of disease and injury in the distant past. It uses skeletal and mummified remains as the substrate for this analysis. The discipline is about 200 years old and initially the analysis was based on abnormalities of…