Tag: Spring 2025
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Sir James Paget
JMS PearceHull, England James Paget (1814–1899) is remembered for his original accounts of “osteitis deformans,” universally known as Paget’s disease of bone,1 and for his original description of Paget’s disease of the nipple, a sign of intraductal carcinoma.2 He made extensive contributions to pathology3 and to surgery.4 As a student at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, he was…
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Eric Ambler’s psychopath
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland Years before Ian Fleming, John le Carré, and Alistair MacLean were popular, there was another spy novelist they all admired. His name was Eric Ambler and, in the late 1930s, just as Europe’s core temperature was heating up for war, Hodder and Stoughton published half a dozen of his earliest thrillers. His…
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Leaving medicine
Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, United States It is February in Boston, and the snow is coming down hard. From his office window, Tom shakes his head and watches a car spin its wheels in the middle of the road. Next week, he will be in southern California for a medical meeting. “I’m so done with this,”…
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Rooted in exile, growing through medicine
Tenzin TamdinConnecticut, United States I was born in a Tibetan refugee settlement in India. My parents were farmers who worked a small piece of land with a few cows. I remember my mother borrowing rice from neighbors when we had none. I remember cleaning cow dung before sunrise, my school uniform folded beside me. Out…
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Wasps, bees, and honey
Bees, wasps, and honey play a potentially important role in the medical world. Only bees make honey, but both bees and wasps are of interest because their bites, though usually trivial, can cause allergic reactions ranging from mild swelling and itching to life-threatening anaphylaxis. These biting insects belong to the order Hymenoptera and need to…
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From “The Sad Shepherd” by W.B. Yeats
Nuka GbafahDublin, Ireland In his poem, Yeats portrays the load of depression weighing upon a desolate shepherd and his bid to find compassion and comfort in the inanimate world. We are not being told whether he is dispirited because of the isolation of his vocation, or has he chosen his profession to cater to a…
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The twelve children of Isabel II
Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Isabel II de Borbón, Queen of Spain from 1833 to 1868, was born in 1830 in Madrid. She was a daughter of Ferdinand VII and succeeded him to the throne in 1833 shortly after her birth. Each European power presented a candidate for consort of the Spanish queen, and the only one…
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Cultural taboos, Marvin Harris, and The Abominable Pig
Zachary SorensenChicago, Illinois, United States Many ancient cultural traditions persist through religious practice to this day. They are particularly evident in the taboos surrounding food. In The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig, anthropologist Marvin Harris explores the food taboos of the ancient world, particularly focusing on the prohibition of pork in Judaism and Islam.…
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Thomas De Quincey and the sisters of sorrow
Born in Manchester in 1785, De Quincey was a sensitive child and had an unhappy childhood. His two sisters had died very young, and he was only seven years old when his father was also brought home to die. Left in the guardianship of his mother and four friends of the family, he was sent…
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Antecedents of Crohn’s disease
JMS PearceHull, England Crohn’s disease was described on several occasions before Crohn’s seminal publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association1 with his two colleagues in 1932. Many reports of a Crohn’s-like condition have claimed priority. Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682–1771) of Padua, the pioneer of pathological anatomy, in De sedibus, et causis morborum per…