Tag: Summer 2022
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Book review: The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A chirurgien should have…the harte of a lyin…the eyes of a hawke…[and] the hands of a woman.”—John Halle, English surgeon (c. 1529–c. 1568) Dr. Harold Gillies (1882–1960) was born in New Zealand to a family of Scottish origin. He studied medicine at Cambridge and took further training in otorhinolaryngology. When the First…
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Book review: Ethel Gordon Fenwick: Nursing Reformer and the First Registered Nurse
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom With the exception of Florence Nightingale and more recently of Mary Seacole, relatively few biographies have been written about pioneering nurses. Yet there have been many others who made great contributions to their profession and deserve to be remembered. Among these is Ethel Gordon Fenwick, whose biography was recently written…
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Diagnosing Mona Lisa
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.”– Noel Coward Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a many-talented genius of the Italian Renaissance. He was a painter, anatomist, engineer, and inventor. One of his best known paintings, a portrait of a noblewoman, is called the Mona…
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Entomophagy: History, global food shortage, and climate change
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States On a recent wildlife adventure to the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, our group of adventurers was treated to an afternoon walk with a group of local Khoisan villagers. They were eager to show us how they were able to live off the land. Highlights of that visit included hearing…
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Questioning immunology and the soul
Vani GhaiPune, India The long and tiring battle with COVID has stimulated modern medicine to investigate new approaches to understanding the science of immunity. It has long been apparent that immune systems exist almost ubiquitously across the living and that all diseases involve the immune system. But even though immunology plays a decisive role in…
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Orthoses, prostheses, and splints
JMS PearceHull, England These common words are sometimes confused. Orthosis is a term first used in English in 1857, from the Greek ὄρθωσις—“making straight.” It is a device that supports or assists residual function after illness or injury. Prosthesis is a Latin word derived from the ancient Greek πρόσθεσις, meaning “addition.” Like many words, its…
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Franz Liszt and Lisztomania: “Le concert, c’est moi”
Elizabeth ColledgeJacksonville, Florida, United States Much has been written about the hysteria accompanying Beatlemania, and before that, the frenzies generated by Elvis, Sinatra, and similar artists, primarily musicians. But before the Beatles, before Elvis, before Frank, there was Franz Liszt, whose 1844 concert in Berlin shocked the musical world and generated the term and medical…