Tag: Physicians of Note
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Armand Trousseau: Physician, teacher, and innovator
Armand Trousseau (1801–1867) was one of the most important figures of 19th-century French medicine. His career spanned the era when medicine was transitioning from speculative theory to clinical observation, careful diagnosis, and systematic teaching. A physician of immense influence, Trousseau made significant contributions to the understanding of diseases ranging from croup and tuberculosis to cancer…
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Théodore Tronchin
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, Netherlands Life in eighteenth-century Geneva was idyllic in many ways. The religious wars had ended, epidemics were still far away, infant mortality was on the decline, Protestant immigrants were arriving, and money flowed into the city faster than the Rhône River. The city walls no longer seemed needed, yet still were there. The…
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Shaping science and education: The contributions of Dr. William H. Welch
Mikaela MelnychukJuhi PatelNoel BrownleeBlacksburg, Virginia William H. Welch was an American physician renowned for his work in pathology, public health, bacteriology, and as the “father of American medical education.”1,2 He was part of the “Big Four” founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was the first dean at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.2 Welch was…
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Dr. Michael Perl: Uncle Mouse’s war and other stories
Michael AbramsonMelbourne, Australia Michael Mathias Perl was born in Melbourne, Australia on 22 May 1903, the first child of Jacob and Elizabeth Perl. He was named after his grandfather who had been born in Chodziessen, Prussia, and arrived in Port Phillip aboard the Arabian in 1853. His father worked as a clerk and later a…
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Dr. David Hosack, physician to Alexander Hamilton
In the early 1800s, when Napoleon had established his hegemony over most of Europe but was utterly ignored by Jane Austen in her novels, barber-surgeons took care of most of the bodily needs of their clients. They shaved their beards, pulled their teeth, drew their blood, lanced boils, applied leeches, and amputated limbs if necessary.…
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Dr. Arnold Kadish: Insulin pump inventor and “Diabetes Dad”
Paige EdmistonSeattle, Washington, United States A black-and-white photograph of a man covered in tubing and wearing an unwieldy backpack-sized device (Figure 1) beamed from the screen at the front of the classroom. The nurse leading the diabetes education class walked from the podium to a table displaying the latest models of continuous glucose monitors and…
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Epithets, solecisms, and Oslerian hagiography
Patrick FiddesMelbourne, Australia To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certainIdeals—this alone is worth the struggle.1 On February 22, 1905, Sir William Osler delivered his final address at Johns Hopkins University, in which he said, “I desire no other epitaph…than the statement that I taught medical students in the…
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Two medical pioneers named Whipple
Two medical pioneers, both sharing the surname Whipple but not related to one another and working in distinct fields of medicine, made a lasting impact on the treatment of two diseases that in their time were universally fatal. Dr. George Hoyt Whipple (1878–1976) was a physician, pathologist, and medical researcher whose work revolutionized the treatment…