Tag: Second World War
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Malaria in defeat and victory
Richard J. E. Brown Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom Lab work in progress at the Royal Navy School of Malaria and Hygiene, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1944. IWM Non-Commercial Licence © IWM A 28167. A few weeks ago, in the reading room of the National Archives in London, I came across the war diary of a…
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C. Miller Fisher: Stroke in the twentieth century
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Stroke, in spite of its serious and widespread impact, had long received little interest from physicians. C. Miller Fisher, one of the twentieth century’s outstanding neurologists and researchers, revolutionized the management of stroke. In this well-researched and readable biography, Louis Caplan, a distinguished Harvard neurologist and former trainee of…
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The surgery of pyloric stenosis in Chicago
John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States Harald Hirschprung, a Danish pediatrician, in 1888 described the clinical course and pathology of two infants who died with congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis.1 Gastroenterostomy was adopted for the treatment of infants with pyloric stenosis, but surgical treatments were hampered by delayed diagnosis, malnutrition, and a lack of knowledge about…
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Cranium: the symbolic powers of the skull
F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, USA It Was a Man and a Pot. Georgia O’Keeffe. 1942. Crocker Art Museum Of all bodily parts, the head has traditionally enjoyed the greatest prestige. The Platonic Timaeus tells us that secondary gods (themselves created by the Demiurge) copied the round form of the universe to make the head,…
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Grandfather of allergy: Dr. Bill Frankland, the ardent centenarian
John Turner United Kingdom Captain A. W. Frankland Image credit Paul Watkins Research for Far East Prisoners of War History Group Fepowhistory.com “For your final choice?” Dr. William Frankland at one hundred and three, the oldest guest ever to appear in the London studio of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, chose Elgar’s Nimrod in…
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Leaving nothing to the imagination: Casualties Union and post-war first aid training
Jessica Douthwaite London, UK Air raid precaution. Practice, first aid party at work. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY In 1940, a new method for training the emergency services in casualty rescue emerged from the demands of the Second World War.1 Until then, rescue training was perfunctory —neither concerned with recreating representative conditions for trainees,…
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The “Bangka Island Massacre”: Australian military nurses in the Pacific War
Angharad Fletcher London and Hong Kong Centaur Poster “Civilian nurses, bound on errands of mercy among the worst underworld dens, are never in danger from the most hardened criminals. But Australia’s nurses were not safe from the Japanese. No British citizen forgets the name of Nurse Edith Cavell. Australia now has her own Edith…
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Archibald McIndoe’s stance against the clinical hospital archetype and the importance of this for the recovery of burnt airmen in the Second World War
Alexander Baldwin Birmingham, UK Archibald McIndoe and the staff of Ward III enjoys a song with a number of Guinea Pigs, also present is actor Edward Chapman. The Second World War marked the beginning of a new generation of aerial warfare. The slow wooden bi-planes of the First World War were replaced by swift…