Tag: Physiology
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Christopher Wren’s contributions to medicine
JMS PearceHull, England An extraordinary natural philosopher and Renaissance man, Christopher Wren (1632–1723) (Fig 1) was primarily an astronomer and architect.1 He is remembered mostly for his work after the Great Fire of London of 1666 as designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral, originally erected in AD 604. Wren laid the first stone at on Ludgate…
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Diagnosis: Neurosyphilis. Treatment: Malaria, iatrogenic
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The syphilitic man was thinking hard…about how to get his legs to step off the curb and carry him across Washington Street. Here was his problem: His brains, where the instructions to his legs originated, were being eaten alive by corkscrews.”– Kurt Vonnegut, The Breakfast of Champions Julius Wagner-Jauregg, M.D. (1857–1940) graduated…
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Jean-Baptiste de Sénac and his early textbook on cardiology
Göran WettrellLund, Sweden William Harvey was an important figure in the early days of cardiovascular physiology. Based on meticulous observations, he published De Motu Cordis and Sanguinus in 1628 and has been proposed as the founder of physiology and cardiology.1 During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, physicians such as Raymond Vieussens (1641-1715), Giovanni-Maria…
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JLW Thudichum: neglected “Father of neurochemistry”
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Knowledge of diseases of the nervous system reflects an understanding of the basic sciences of neural mechanisms and organization. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Nobel prizewinners Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal founded the neuron doctrine, and Charles Scott Sherrington explained the propagation of the…
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The forerunner
Shafiqah SamarasamMalaysia Southeast Asia has experienced detrimental, large-scale air pollution for decades. Known as the “Southeast Asia haze,” this transboundary pollution is largely caused by illegal agricultural fires in the forests of Indonesia. The lingering smoke results in breathing difficulties and adverse health outcomes for the citizens of the region.1 With haze becoming a prevalent, annual…
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William Sands Cox—Surgeon and founder of the Birmingham Medical School
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom In the early nineteenth century Birmingham was the second largest city in England. It was an industrial powerhouse, known as the city of a thousand trades, but it did not have its own medical school. Those wishing to become doctors had to train in London. William Sands Cox was born…
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The finality in their voices: Death, disease, and palliation in opera
Lea C. DacyEelco F. M. WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States I know she had tuberculosis! She was coughing her brains out . . . but still she kept right on singing.* Operatic death is often glorious, melodious, and heartbreaking. Naturally, composers and librettists can claim pristine ignorance when it comes to the process of dying. Leaving…