Tag: Summer 2017
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Is Daddy a good doctor?
Gregory W RuteckiCleveland, Ohio George Lundberg posed an intriguing question for a generation of physicians: why don’t more doctors go to the funerals or calling hours of their patients?1 In fact, he boldly predicted that the only funeral you can be sure your physician will attend will be that of his own.1 I attended several of patients’…
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Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817–1848): A tale of aspiration and decline
JMS PearceHull, England On the bleak, rocky, windswept Yorkshire moors is the famous Brontës’ parsonage of St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Haworth. Here the celebrated Brontë sisters wrote their varied poetry and tales of romance, repressed passions, and frustrated love. This year (2017) marks 200 years since the birth of their brother, Patrick Branwell…
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Treating thunderbirds
Ananya MahapatraNew Delhi, India The cacophony of the psychiatric ward paused for a moment as a young woman was ushered in by two hospital attendants and her frail, frightened mother. She laughed garishly and cussed in rural vernacular with wild abandon. She spoke in loud unapologetic spurts, like pennies falling out of pockets, and moved like…
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I sing the battery electric
Victoria CrawfordChiang Mai, Thailand One, two nights there came an odd flutterwhen half asleep, half awake, on my left side,as slight as a moth’s wings might stutter,a beat— lopsided, not to be denied. My five year old maker unpaced me,potholed cadences , the rhythm of my life:five years for the electric battery,four or five for me…
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Unlocking the secrets of a bohemian painting
Bernard BrabinLiverpool, England The image By an unknown artist, the Deštná painting in the National Gallery, Prague, depicts Madonna and Infant from a fifteenth century perspective. The Madonna’s attention is directed to the child, within a space surrounded by ellipses, human figures, and two angels processing petitions. Orthogonal lines connect the gaze of these peripheral…
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The curious tale of Leonardo Da Vinci and the spherical uterus
John MassieParkville, Victoria, Australia Leonardo Da Vinci had one of the greatest minds in history. Accomplished in so many fields of both the arts and science, he challenged contemporary thinking, and was one of the early Renaissance artists to use dissection of corpses in order to understand the human form. His anatomical drawings reveal a…
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Death by dysentery? Artist Frank Russell Wadsworth in Madrid
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States Though he basked in the Spanish sun, the summer warmth would be his downfall, indeed his early death. Artist Frank Russell Wadsworth of Chicago gravitated towards the vivid colors and picturesque river banks of Spain. He was but a mere thirty-one years of age when he died in 1905 in…
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Thomas Jefferson’s medical schools
John EhrhardtPatrick O’LearyMiami, Florida, United States Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States of America, devoted much of his life to science, medicine, and education. Entering the College of William & Mary at sixteen, he was mentored in science and philosophy by Professor William Small. Though Jefferson…
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Breathing
Laura Anne WhiteRochester, MN, USA Author’s statement: I wrote this poem on a piece of scrap paper around five am, towards the end of a night shift. About fifteen minutes after coming into work that evening, a patient of mine who had been somnolent struggled to breathe. Moments like this have a way of grounding…
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Sir James Paget
Born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in 1814, James Paget was one of the outstanding surgeons of his time, remembered for his description of osteitis deformans (Paget’s disease of bone) and of Paget’s disease of the breast. He has been regarded as the surgical equivalent of William Osler in medical education and of Rudolph Virchow in…