Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Ronald Fishman

  • Dirty, dark, dangerous: Coal miners’ nystagmus

    Ronald FishmanChicago, Illinois, United States It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,Where the danger is double and pleasures are fewWhere the rain never falls and the sun never shinesIt’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine. From the song “Dark as a Dungeon” – Merle Travis Nystagmus is a repetitive oscillation of the…

  • Nature telling her secrets: the Kepler–Descartes connection

    Ronald FishmanChicago, Illinois, United States Nature tells us one secret in terms of another, and she may refuse to disclose one secret until another has been laid bare.– T.S. Kuhn1 In 1604, Johannes Kepler solved the problem of how light is refracted within the eye to produce an image on the surface of the retina. This problem…