Tag: Summer 2012
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Defined spaces
Heather Alva Palo Alto, California, United States Photography by Piccolo Namek “We’re already seeing signs of damage in the retina, but honestly, don’t worry about retinopathy; there have been so many recent medical advancements that I’m sure they’ll find a cure for diabetes in the next ten years.” You smile and nod. You don’t…
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Winter race against time
Christopher CameronKelso, Scotland, United Kingdom The phone rang in my surgery as I was embarking on an insurance medical examination a few days before Christmas. The town outside was strangely quiet, with few vehicles moving owing to a heavy snowfall earlier in the evening. Knowing my receptionist would only have put a call through during…
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Summer heat, crisis, and the glad game
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Late afternoon in early August, Thessaloniki, Greece. A crazy time to be at work. Most colleagues are off for their summer vacations. I usually take mine in installments, a week in July, another week or so in the second half of August, depending on patient load and general circumstances. The summer heat…
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Paul Dudley White
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States In September 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a myocardial infarction. Dr. Paul Dudley White (1886–1973) was called in to attend to him. For a time, Dr. White was probably the most famous cardiologist in the US because of his attendance to the president. A noted photograph of him at…
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Austin Flint: Eminent American physician
I need not say that to withhold drugs in the treatment of disease is as important an exercise of professional judgment as to employ them. Nothing is easier that to prescribe drugs. On the other hand, to refrain from their use may require not a little firmness and independence. An ignorant or weak practitioner therefore…
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Distorting anatomy
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, USA In this Mannerist painting of the deposition of Christ commissioned by the Capponi family for their burial chapel in Florence, high drama, distorted anatomy, and cool colors characterize this path-breaking composition. A grave attendant precariously squats on his tippy toes while impossibly bearing the weight of the dead, limp body of…
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The tracheotomy
Michelle Paff Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The transformation of a medical student into a physician is depicted in the short story, The Steel Windpipe (1925), by the Russian physician and author, Mikhail Bulgakov. A young practitioner is stationed alone at a rural hospital, and one snowy evening he is approached by a woman with her dying…
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Bronzino and the wages of sin
Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States No one knows who first conceived the idea of using a wig or precisely when this curious idea came into being. Wigs were known in Greco-Roman antiquity, as one can see in Ovid’s “Art of Love” (Ars Amatoria: book III, verses 165–168), where the poet upbraids a woman for wearing…