Tag: Spring 2019
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How to save a life
Sam CampbellMoh’D IbrahimJohnson City, Tennessee, United States My wife is in Texas, threatening to file divorce papers. I am here, 996 miles away, trying to find Mrs. Smith who has wandered out of her room searching the entire hospital for her dead husband. When I find her on the fourth floor, she asks if I…
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Luigi Galvani: beginnings of electrophysiology
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Physicist or physician? Scientist or healer? Artificially, these are divisions that have classified doctors through the ages. Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) (Fig 1.) showed that it was possible to be an amalgam of both. The word “galvanize” derives not from physics but from Galvani, a medical doctor who studied electricity in animal…
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Samuel Clossy’s Observations: An unrecognized contribution to the origin of anatomical pathology
Guillermo QuinonezAncaster, ON, CanadaLaurette GeldenhuysHalifax, NS, Canada It is often stated in the medical history literature that Anatomical Pathology was established as a modern science in 1761 when Giovanni Battista Morgagni published Site and Causes of Disease (Figure 1) in Italy.1,2 However, the development of the discipline was likely more complex, occurring somewhat concurrently in…
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Pig-tail probe
Zeynel KarciogluCharlottesville, Virginia, United States I read with great interest Dr. Stanley Gutiontov’s article entitled “Pig man: pigs in medicine from Galen to transgenic xenotransplantation” in Hektoen International, and it reminded me of an amusing “pig-related” experience I had years ago. The twisted tobacco leaves that sailors smoked in the 1700s resembled the curly tail…
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Dangerous inheritance
Merle BorgSan Diego, California, United States It was an ordinary accident. Two boys driving to high school had topped a hill too fast, and wedged their small pickup under a stopped truck. Hundred-foot skid marks explained it all. Both boys were pinned in the wreckage, legs folded in odd directions. The driver was convulsing thick…
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The iron crab
Sean VarnerBaltimore, Maryland, United States You only live twice:Once when you are bornAnd once when you look death in the face.— Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice In 1955 the thriller writer Ian Fleming traveled to Istanbul for an Interpol conference, which at first he found “spectacularly dull.”1 This was to change dramatically on the…
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Infertility in Nigeria and the race for parenthood
Princewill UdomPort Harcourt, Nigeria Infertility is a growing problem in Nigeria. In one study, researchers found that female gender-related causes accounted for 42.9% of infertility, in contrast to male causes, which were about half that number.1 Common causes are broadly categorized into genetic, physiological, endocrine, and lifestyle factors. One consequence of this problem is a…
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Grandfather of allergy: Dr. Bill Frankland, the ardent centenarian
John TurnerUnited Kingdom “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 tribute to his fallen comrades while recalling his deliverance from Far East imprisonment.1 August 1945 and the Second World War…
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Intersection of faith and science in Garcia-Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons
Sualeha ShekhaniKarachi, Pakistan “If the swords of past conflicts are beaten into plowshares, and if taboos regarding the discussion of religion can be overcome, both medicine and religion can learn constructively from each other.”1 The opposition of reason and religion has a long history. While this may be due to their unique epistemological positioning, bitterness…