Tag: Spring 2020
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The Siege
Glen P. Aylward Springfield, Illinois, United States The Siege reflects the battle society is currently waging against a formidable adversary—COVID-19. The colors indicate fear and frustration, but also hope. Front-line medical personnel wearing PPE are depicted in the background. The painting is acrylic on canvas. The Siege. Glen P. Aylward. Acrylic on canvas. …
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All too human: The mountain gorillas of Uganda
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States The Ugandan mountain gorilla is a member of the Hominidae family, also known as the great Apes. The extant species include: the orangutan, the eastern and western gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo, and ourselves—Homo sapiens. The mountain gorilla is one of two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. The one…
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Ernest Henry Starling and the birth of English Physiology
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Ernest Starling. Univ. College. Graduate Guy Hospital. 1890. London. (From Images from the History of Medicine (NLM) ). Accessed via Wikimedia Science has only one language, quantity, and only one argument, the experiment -EH Starling Ernest Henry Starling (1866-1927) (Fig 1) was an outstanding figure in the…
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Reflections on time long gone by
John RaffenspergerFort Meyers, Florida, United States The author of this delightful book, Dr. John Raffensperger, is a retired surgeon who entered medical school in 1949. His book presents a stark contrast between how medicine was practiced then and how it is now. It highlights the many changes, mostly good but some bad, that have taken…
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Being our best selves: hidden in full view
James Stoller Peter Rea Alan Kolp Cleveland, Ohio, United States Figure 1. Pillars and pediment We live in a paradox framed by a tension between age-old wisdom about excellence and our current state. The paradox is this: our behaviors and our priorities are often at odds with age-old truths about how we can be…
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John Francis Hall-Edwards—a radiology pioneer
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Hall-Edwards (Courtesy of The Library of Birmingham Archives) John Francis Hall-Edwards was born on 19 December 1858 in the Kings Norton area of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He was educated at King Edwards School in Birmingham followed by Queen’s College, Birmingham where he studied medicine and was an apprentice to…
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Good patient, good doctor
Lealani Mae Acosta Nashville, Tennessee, United States Illustration by Lealani Mae Y. Acosta What makes a “good” patient? What makes a “good” doctor? I am a cognitive behavioral neurologist who specializes in dementia. I relish the longitudinal relationship I have with patients and appreciate hearing them say with pride, “Dr. Acosta is MY doctor.” Being someone’s…
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Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain
Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…
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Belding Scribner and his arteriovenous Teflon shunt
Belding Scribner. Photo by Kay Rodriguez. From University of Washington School of Medicine Online News Archive. Without Belding Scribner maintenance dialysis might have never happened. Although by 1960 the technology of hemodialysis had become quite advanced, and several types of dialyzers, notably the Kolff Twin Coil, had been successfully used, long-term access to the vascular system…