Tag: Spring 2018
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Henrik Ibsen’s diagnosis of the conscience
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the protagonist in Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, An Enemy of the People, thought he had finally landed the ideal position as physician for an idyllic Norwegian resort town. He was well-paid and well-connected; his brother was even the mayor. Life and livelihood centered on the public baths…
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Edward Jenner and the dairymaid
Smallpox has plagued mankind since time immemorial, causing huge epidemics with great loss of life and often changing the course of history. The disease could be prevented or ameliorated by variolation, the subcutaneous inoculation with fluid from smallpox lesions into non-immune individuals. Variolation had been used for centuries, even for members of royal families. It…
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Retirement reflections: from code to compassion with Chloe
Gregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States William May and Samuel Shem have described inadequacies of doctor-patient relationships that are characterized as code models.1,2 May observed that these medical codes binding patients and their physicians together shape relationships similar to habits or rules, are aesthetic, and value style over compassion. Shem wrote The House of God when these…
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The Terme Boxer’s trauma
Seth JudsonLos Angeles, California, United States The cavernous eyes of the Terme Boxer look at me with the same anguish and exhaustion that has intrigued archaeologists and art historians since the boxer was first unearthed in Rome over a century ago. Experts date the bronze sculpture back to the third century BCE, and many have…
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My mother and Proust
Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, United States “Mom, one day I’m going to write a story about you. I’ve already picked out a title: “My Mother and Proust,” I laugh. I look at her face, hoping for a smile. Before my eighty-six-year-old mother developed Parkinson’s dementia a few years ago, she would have laughed with me. Instead,…
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Healthcare for the popes
Guy de Chauliac was the personal physician of three of the seven popes forced to reside in Avignon during their so-called Babylonian captivity. Although he wrote a famous textbook on surgery, he practiced mainly as a physician, and reportedly wielded the knife mainly to embalm the bodies of dead popes but was careful to avoid…
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“The Grasshopper” by Chekhov: folly and regrets
Diphtheria in the days of writers such as Chekhov and Goncharov was a common disease that spread death and devastation across the wide expanse of the Russian Empire. It could kill its victims by its toxic effects on the heart but more often suffocated them with a grayish white membrane in their throat and nasal…
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Scotch
Eden AlmasudeMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States I don’t remember your name,Only fasciculating musclesbeginning to wasteNerves with unknown lesionsA toe up, a reflex downThe neurologist quietly notes,Bulbar involvement entails a poor prognosisMeaning: if you can’t talk, you can’t breatheEach new symptom forebodingSlow, stepwise deathWe turn to count,atrophyspasticityhyperreflexiamapping neuronsalong the examWe fixate to push awaythe realization,this kind, tattooed bikeris…
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Call me Sylvester!
T. KilleenCleveland, Ohio, United States I could hear him as he rounded the corner from the lobby. He seemed to know almost everyone in the office; they cooed over him and he fawned at each and every one of them. My day was already busy with a full office schedule, a lecture to the residents…