Tag: Review of Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Handbook to the Heart of Medicine
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Corn, pellagra, and modern medicine—How an ancient disease was recognized in South Carolina’s state lunatic asylum
Brody FoglemanHarsh JhaNoel BrownleeJuliSu DiMucci-WardSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States Pellagra is a disease of vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency. Niacin is the precursor for many physiologic processes involving nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), an enzyme that carries out long biochemical processes essential to a wide range of… Read more
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The fall
Max KutchHanover, New Hampshire Gazing through my night vision goggles (NVGs) at the green outlines of my teammates, we began to silently enter our sniper hide. My breathing labored under the heavy weight of my battle gear and the thick, humid Iraqi air. As I… Read more
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Empathy or sympathy?
JMS PearceHull, England David Jeffrey’s splendid paper about emotions and empathy1 points out that Sir William Osler claimed that by excluding emotions, doctors gained a special objective insight into the patient’s suffering. But when Osler advised students that “insensibility is not only an advantage, but… Read more
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Movie review: Miss Evers’ Boys
P. Ravi ShankarKuala Lumpur, Malaysia The Tuskegee Syphilis study was a dark chapter in United States history. In 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) began to study the natural history of progression of syphilis. The study was originally called the “Tuskegee study of… Read more
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The night the emergency room staff vanished
Edward TaborBethesda, Maryland One of the strangest events of my medical career occurred on a spring evening in 1975. It was during one of my outpatient months as a pediatric resident at a large medical center in New York City. During the day, I took… Read more
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Jaws and galeophobia
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”– Herman Melville, Moby Dick The 1975 thriller film, Jaws, takes place in a New England summer resort town. People flock to the beach, and two swimmers are killed by sharks. A marine biologist brought in to… Read more
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“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”: Who said it first?
Robert SchellBrooklyn, New York In these days of rampant biomedical commercialization, the Bible-inspired admonition “No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer” takes on added urgency. The quotation’s usual attribution to Sir Thomas Browne, the seventeenth-century English physician-writer, gives… Read more
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George Redmayne Murray and “myxœdema”
JMS PearceHull, England The transformation from myxedema to normal health is one of the most satisfying experiences for patient and physician that medicine has to offer. Yet until the end of the nineteenth century, the function of the thyroid gland was unknown. In the wake… Read more
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“You will be alright”
Swetha KannanAjman, United Arab Emirates “Will my daughter be alright?” asked the anxious mother, trying to hold back her tears. A young girl in her early twenties, so petite and frail that her body seemed to be like a sole pearl in a large sea.… Read more
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Wounded healer
Brandon MuncanStony Brook, New York Since Plato, the notion of a sufferer helping the suffering has been proposed as one of the more skillful ways of helping a patient through an illness.1 Although this concept has been discussed since the time of Athenian philosophy, the… Read more
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Dr. David Hartley and the benevolent AI
Erik AndersonHouston, Texas Question posed to ChatGPT: What is the “Golden Rule”?ChatGPT answer*: The “Golden Rule” is a principle found in many different cultures and ethical traditions and often phrased as “Treat others as you would like to be treated.”1 Presently, artificial intelligence (AI) applications… Read more