Tag: Spring 2020
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A very early Picasso painting
Pablo Picasso was sixteen years old and obviously was not yet famous when he made this painting. His father, an artist himself, had encouraged his son to paint but favored traditional forms such as country scenes and conventional portraits. He himself sat as model for Science and Charity (1897) and is depicted as the conventional…
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Intubation for diphtheria
In 1904 diphtheria was a dangerous killer that suffocated its victims by obstructing the respiratory passages and sometimes required an emergency but dangerous surgical tracheostomy. In this painting a specialist in infectious diseases is avoiding tracheostomy by inserting a tube to bypass the obstruction. He is observed intently by interested physicians, all watching this new…
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Four nurses caring for one patient
Four nurses are taking care of this sick patient, presumably in a hospital, clearly at a time when there was no nursing shortage. The one on the left is taking the patient’s pulse; one on the right seems to be staring into space. Spring 2020 | |
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Nurse brings in the meal for a convalescing patient
This scene is from the nineteenth century, when most sick people were being cared for at home. A family member is reading to a convalescing young woman, while a nurse seen on the far right is bringing in the patient’s medicine, or more likely the meal, which she has probably prepared herself. Watercolor by R.H.…
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Nurse dressing a wounded soldier during World War I
This painting by John Lavery, published in the Burlington Magazine, (September 2014, Vol. 156 | No. 1338) shows a wounded World War I soldier having his arm dressed by a nurse. She wears the traditional uniform of nurses, with a veil attached to her cap, reflecting the times when nurses were still being addressed as…
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The wife of Antoine Lavoisier
Born in 1758 and described as beautiful and intellectually curious, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze became the wife of the famous chemist and scientist Antoine Lavoisier, acting as his laboratory assistant and contributing to his work. After her husband’s execution during the French Revolution, she assembled and published his papers and remarried in 1804. She lived until…
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William Morton first demonstrates the use of ether anesthesia
In 1846 the dentist William T Morton first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic at the Massachusetts General Hospital. At the end of the procedure, the surgeon famously said: “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.” Very soon anesthesia became universally used in surgery. Spring 2020 | |
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To see or not to see
J. Trig BrownDurham, North Carolina, United States In my youth I watchedthe body countmount.In black and whitethe nightly news“and that’s the way it is”Saint Walter mouthed,to living rooms nationwide.This visible enemyInvisibly changing us all. Today, masked, I watchthe body countmount.In high definitioncolorful graphics,erratic, non-stop messaging,fingers pointingfingers crossed,this invisible enemyvisibly changing us all. J. TRIG BROWN,…
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How a small town kept smallpox small
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands To make a mountain out of a molehill is a vice, but to keep the mole underground is a virtue. The little town of Tilburg in the south of the Netherlands was not accustomed to seeing mountains, but when a molehill first came into sight, it promptly flattened it into the…