Tag: Summer 2016
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The Holy Infirmary of the Knights of St. John in Malta
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States On a small island near Sicily, where today one hears the rich Maltese language—a mixed tongue of Italian, Arabic, English, and even French—a hospital was established in 1574 by the Knights of St. John. These aristocratic, militaristic, and religious men were also known as the Hospitalers, in part for their…
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Fracastorius, the man who named syphilis
One of the great names in medical history, Girolamo Fracastoro appears in the National Gallery painting by Titian in full regalia. We owe him the name syphilis, derived from his poem (1530) Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (“Syphilis or The French Disease”) in which a shepherd boy named Syphilus was punished by Apollo with a horrible…
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Outwitting “Typhoid Mary”
Lisa MullenneauxNew York City, New York, United States The Irish cook who infected at least forty-eight people with typhoid bacilli, three of whom died, had a surname and a history, but Americans remember her only for her germs. Mary Mallon’s physical stamina and quick wits had served her well as an immigrant struggling to survive…
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Ronald Ross: polymath and discoverer
Satish SarosheIndore, India Sir Ronald Ross received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for discovering the malaria parasite in the stomach of a mosquito, thereby proving that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes and laying the foundation for future methods of combating the disease. Born in Almora, India, in 1857 to a Scottish general in the Indian Army and his English…
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Doctor Riker’s decision
Julie GianakonPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On the frigid Christmas night of 1776, Dr. John Riker was alarmed by the baying of dogs outside his New Jersey home. He went out into the darkness and discovered that the cause of the commotion was a regiment of armed men. Assuming they belonged to the British army, he angrily ordered…
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A one-millimeter push revolutionizes ear surgery: The story of Samuel Rosen and surgery of the stapes bone
Mahmood BhuttaLondon In 1952 Dr. Samuel Rosen gently pushed the stapes of a man on whose ear he was operating.1 The stapes is the smallest bone in the body and the last of the three bones of hearing. Rosen was not sure whether or not the stapes had moved and so he pushed just a millimeter…
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Horace Wells
Roshan RadhakrishnanKerala, India In 1845, a dentist stepped onto the spotlight at the revered Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He wanted to show his medical brethren something unique, something unheard of back then in the field of surgery. He wanted to show them how the world could finally be rid of pain. The young man…
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Doctorum Ecclesiae: The medical clerics of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, England
Adam S. KomorowskiSang Ik SongLimerick, Ireland It is difficult to remember that in medieval and early modern Europe the church was often the locus of medical practice and that medicine and religion had a symbiotic co-existence.1 Many of the early Christian Church Fathers, some given the title Doctors of the Church, saw their roles to include…
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Ex memoriam: A eulogy for a med school factoid
Samer MuallemPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of yet another beloved colleague and friend, the Branches of the Internal Iliac Artery. Like those who have gone before him, he was taken from us far too soon, during yet another brutal morning rounds. This marks the fourth time this week that the…
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The language of medicine
Rebecca MacDonell-Yilmaz Providence, Rhode Island Language, both spoken and written, plays an enormous role in the education that we absorb from our predecessors and pass on to our successors. I realized this early on during my clinical rotations as a medical student, as I stared, lost, at the fishbone diagrams scratched out in residents’ notes…