Tag: Spring 2026
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Medical quackery in L’elisir d’amore
Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’amore (1832) is more than a charming love story set in the Italian countryside. At its core is one of opera’s most memorable charlatans: Doctor Dulcamara. He is a traveling medicine vendor whose snake-oil salesmanship reveals the human desire for magical solutions. Through Dulcamara, Donizetti and his librettist Felice Romani offer…
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Albania: Tradition and resilience in the Western Balkans
Albania is a small country of 2.5 million people, well worth visiting, known for its striking natural landscapes, rugged mountains dominating much of the interior, and coast offering some of the most beautiful beaches in the Mediterranean. In the north, the Albanian Alps attract hikers and travelers seeking dramatic scenery, while traditional village life in…
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Albanian lovers and magnetism in Così fan tutte
In Così fan tutte, Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte have the two male protagonists, Ferrando and Guglielmo, return in disguise to test, by wager, the fidelity of their fiancées. The choice of the disguise as Albanians, at first sight exotic and comic, resonates deeply with late 18th-century memories of the 1683 Siege of Vienna, in which the Albanians served…
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Marco Polo: A medical perspective
Marco Polo’s journey from Venice to the court of Kublai Khan and back spanned roughly 24 years, from 1271 to 1295. In his account, Il Milione (also known as The Travels of Marco Polo), he documents many aspects of life and medicine in his time. Leaving Venice at seventeen, he visited the arid deserts of…
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The ancient Philistines of Ashkelon and Gaza
The Philistines are remembered primarily through biblical narratives and archaeological discoveries. They interacted with neighboring cultures in the early Iron Age (ca. 1200–600 BCE) and are believed to have been part of the broader “Sea Peoples,” likely originating in the Aegean before settling along the Levantine coast. Excavated skeletal remains at these sites reveal a…
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Death, part of life itself: Vision of a surgeon
Miguel Vassallo PalermoElena Sophia HernandezJosé Manuel GarcíaRhayniveth SequeraKeldrin PáezCaracas, Venezuela Since the dawn of humanity, humans have tried to find meaning in death. People often fear the dying process itself, what comes after death, and the unknown.1 Feelings of powerlessness lead us to surround death with beliefs, rituals, and cultural expressions. From a religious point…
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Theopompus of Chios and public health in antiquity
Theopompus was a Greek historian and rhetorician who lived from c. 380 to 315 BCE. He was not a physician, yet his works offer a window into how the ancient Greeks understood health, disease, and contagion. Born on the Aegean island of Chios in c. 377 BCE, he spent his early youth in Athens with…
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Dronacharya: A father, a teacher, and a human
Rao UppuBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States The epics of ancient India, particularly the Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics, offer enduring insights into human nature. Among them, Dronacharya, a revered teacher of warfare and royal preceptor to the Kuru princes, stands out as reflecting both the strengths and limits of a teacher. Dronacharya’s…
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Memento mori and ora pro nobis: Finding healing in sacred art
Marilyn NapolitanoScottsdale, Arizona, United States A storied connection exists between religion and medicine. The first hospitals were monasteries and convents, where holistic care tended to spiritual needs alongside those of the body. From the Middle Ages on, religious orders played a major role in the founding of medical institutions. Between 1866 and 1926 alone, nuns…