Tag: Spring 2026
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Freud, Mesmer, and Charcot in modern literature
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland In modern literature, historical psychiatrists and neurologists sometimes appear as fictional characters. A case in point is found in Jed Rubenfeld’s novel The Interpretation of Murder, which opens with Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sándor Ferenczi arriving in New York in 1909 to deliver a series of lectures on the controversial subject…
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Ernest Hemingway: A medical portrait
From a medical point of view, the life of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was shaped by repeated physical trauma, chronic disease, hereditary factors, and profound psychological influences. In the world of literature, he is remembered for his minimalist prose—spare, direct, “bare-bones”, and stripped of ornamentation. But behind the muscular sentences and the mythology of masculine bravado…
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The medical life of Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was a novelist, short story writer, and poet. Raised in New England, she was an abolitionist and feminist, remained unmarried, and became active in reform movements such as temperance and women’s suffrage. As her family always lived on the poverty line, she took on various jobs at an early age and…
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C.S. Lewis and the medieval model of the universe
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was a famous author and professor of English literature at both Oxford and Cambridge. Much of his scholarly work focused on the Middle Ages. His work The Discarded Image (1964) concerned the medieval concept of the universe. He drew his material from the writings of the…
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Public health awareness of cataract
Hosam Halim Amal Halim Menna Elbendary Walaa Asaad Salah Eldean Elsherbini Dalia SabryEgypt During our humanitarian medical outreach campaigns in poor and remote areas, we observed a high prevalence of visual impairment among many patients who presented with advanced medical, surgical, and oncological diseases. Their family members are preoccupied with earning a livelihood, and no…
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Herman Boerhaave
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Herman Boerhaave was born on December 13, 1668, in Voorhout, a small village north of Leiden, Holland, an area known for its tulip-growing. He initially studied divinity, intending to be a priest, then continued his philosophy studies in Leiden on a scholarship when his father died. He then studied medicine…
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The guinea pig’s gift: Serendipity and the starvation of leukemia
Prasad IyerSingapore Medical breakthroughs often arrive not with a fanfare of logic, but with the quiet, baffling persistence of a laboratory anomaly that refuses to be ignored. In 1953, the laboratories of Cornell University Medical College operated in a world away from the high-stakes precision of modern oncology. Dr. John Kidd was not hunting for…
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The treatment of achalasia: A historical analysis
Piyush PillarisettiPennsylvania, United States Achalasia is an esophageal motility disorder characterized by impaired lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxation and absent or spastic esophageal peristalsis. Typically, the condition leads to solid and liquid dysphagia at symptom onset. After the pathophysiology of achalasia was described in the 1900s, treatment modalities have converged on one goal: reduce LES…
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Byzantine medical education
Brady LonerganFarmington, Connecticut Institutional medical education in the Eastern Roman Empire bore considerable resemblance to modern medical education in terms of structure and accessibility. During the early Byzantine period, medical instruction could be attained in one of two ways: either through an apprenticeship system, often between father and son; or by completing coursework overseen by…
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Artists’ use of color to represent states of mind: Brice Marden and the Virgin Mary
Paul WilliamsBeaconsfield, United Kingdom Associations between color and states of mind are a familiar aspect of everyday experience. Depression is referred to as “the blues,” someone may be “green with envy,” and “seeing red” is widely associated with aggression and anger; these anecdotal associations are supported by a significant body of empirical evidence.1 Artists have…