Tag: Spring 2023
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William Budd and typhoid fever
William Budd. From lithograph published by A.B. Black, 1862. Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. In the year 1811 when William Budd was born, medicine was still in its dark ages. Physicians dressed in black and wore top hats, surgeons operated in street clothes without anesthesia, and infectious diseases such as typhoid and cholera were thought…
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Forgotten pioneers of pediatric cardiac surgery
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States Credit for pioneering heart surgery in children is primarily given to Robert Gross of Boston Children’s Hospital and Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. However, two Chicago surgeons who saved many lives with their innovations in the same era have been largely forgotten. In the first half of…
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Greater than the sum of her parts: The journey of a medical student
Japjee ParmarAmritsar, Punjab, India “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.I saw myself sitting…
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Temporary insanity in tropical waters
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture sees, On the smooth ocean’s azure bed, Enamell’d fields and verdant trees: With eager haste he longs to rove In that fantastick scene, and thinks It must be some enchanted grove; And in he leaps, and down he sinks.1 It was the…
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William Webster, the first modern Canadian academic anesthesiologist
Kush PatelAjax, Canada Until the early twentieth century, anesthetics were a black box, and even though ether and chloroform were commonly used, their physiological effects were little known and felt nothing short of wizardry.1 No wonder Dr. John Warren cried “this is no humbug!” on seeing a patient open his eyes for the first time…
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Robert Hooke and Micrographia
JMS PearceHull, England It is perhaps rash to attempt to appraise the work of Robert Hooke (1635–1703), but renewed attention is merited to a great scientist whose contribution to medicine and science has not been adequately acknowledged. Robert Hooke was a scientist and biologist who, at a time when science was young and not yet…
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Fritz Mainzer and the Jewish Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel In 1961, Dr. Fritz Mainzer (1897–1961) was invited to lecture at a medical congress in Wiesbaden, Germany. Unfortunately, a fatal myocardial infarction ended the life and impressive career of this forgotten Jewish physician and scientist.1 Mainzer studied in Heidelberg and Frankfurt-on-Main. He was an assistant to Gustav Georg Embden (1874–1933), a…
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Blake’s autonomous newborn: Neonatal mortality in “Infant Joy” and “Infant Sorrow”
Zoya GurmDetroit, Michigan, United States William Blake (1757–1827) was an artist, poet, and progenitor of the Romantic era. Romanticism represents the artistic and intellectual movement responding to the Enlightenment, industrialization, and political revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.1 A prominent theme in the work of Blake and other Romantic poets is an…
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Breaking Bad: A case study of antisocial personality disorders
Jason LiuSan Francisco Bay Area, California, United States Both psychopathy and the non-clinical “sociopathy”1 have been diagnosed in infamous serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Gacy, and popular films and TV shows, like American Psycho and Dexter, have drawn from these diagnoses. Psychopathy and sociopathy are amongst the most complex mental disorders. Both…
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Seasick: Lessons in human anatomy from Hyman Bloom’s The Hull (1952)
Liz IrvinWorcester, Massachusetts, United States “I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire.”– Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror A cold dread crept up the back of my neck…