Tag: schizophrenia
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Medicine and cinema—A cultural symbiosis
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom For doctors and lovers of cinema, 1895 was an important year. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a fifty-year-old professor of physics, discovered X-rays in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany. On March 22 1895, the Lumiere brothers presented the first film on a screen to an audience of 200 in…
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Queen Juana: The mad or the betrayed?
Juliana MenegakisLondon, United Kingdom Juana of Castile is known by her epithet “the Mad.” But was she truly insane? Infanta Juana of Castile and Aragon was born in 1479 to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the famed Catholic Monarchs who united Spain. Juana had two older siblings, Isabella and John, and…
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Eugen Bleuler and schizophrenia
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England, United Kingdom Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) (Fig 1) was one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time, best known today for his introduction of the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox. In the second half of the nineteenth century, psychological medicine was in its infancy.…
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Culture frames the experience and response to psychotic delusions
Colleen DonnellyDenver, Colorado, United States Since the 1950s many people suffering from psychotic delusions have claimed that these were caused by contemporary technology such as electromagnetic and micro- waves or computer chips clandestinely planted during medical procedures or alien abductions. Such tightly held beliefs and anxieties have a long history, as shown by the following…
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Dr. William Minor and the Oxford English Dictionary
JMS Pearce Hull, England, UK After the first dictionary of English words (Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabetical… 1604) many dictionaries aimed to provide typical spelling, meaning, and often pronunciation, etymology, synonyms, and quotations. A New English Dictionary was an important advance reflecting everyday language compiled by the first professional lexicographer, John Kersey the Younger, in 1702.…
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Ada English: The forgotten fighter
Laura KingAtlanta, GA, United States A reformer of psychiatric care, a fighter for Irish independence, and a forgotten figure in Irish history—that was Dr. Adeline (Ada) English. As a female physician working in Ireland from the beginning to the middle of the 1900s, English faced obstacles because of both her sex and her politics. However,…
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Hemodialysis treatment for schizophrenia?
Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did, and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.”-Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) Jean-Baptiste Denys (1643–3 October 1704), a French physician who was the personal doctor…
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Intersection of mental illness, the supernatural, and gender in Pakistan
Sualeha Siddiq ShekhaniKarachi, Pakistan Maria sits across from me in a pristine clinic room in a private hospital in Pakistan. At first reluctant to speak about her husband’s illness, her words suddenly flow as if a dam has burst. She wants me to know everything: her suffering and her worry at taking care of her…
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Dr. Sabina Spielrein: Consequences of feminism and love
Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada While all our lives are eventful, some people tend to experience situations that set them apart. Born in 1885 in Rostov, Czarist Russia, Sabina was the eldest child of prosperous intellectualized parents of Jewish origin. Academically and artistically gifted, by age eighteen she developed alarming behavior. She showed tics, grimaces, body…