Tag: Summer 2023
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A tale of two physicians and Albert Göring
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Hermann Epenstein Ritter von Mauternburg (1850–1934) was a physician and merchant who played a significant role in the lives of anti-Nazi activist Albert Göring and his family. He was their family doctor, a close friend, and godfather to Albert and his older brother, Hermann. The brothers spent many holidays with him…
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A trip to the museum
Sam WoodworthPortland, Maine I recently had the opportunity to visit the Frick Collection in New York City and was delighted to see Portrait of Comtesse d’Haussonville, a beautiful painting by the nineteenth-century French neoclassical artist, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The subject of the painting, Louise de Broglie, appears to have just returned from a show…
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The death of Socrates and common hemlock
Umut AkovaAnkara, Turkey Socrates (469–399 BC) was the ancient Greek philosopher most often credited with pioneering Western philosophy and with founding the Socratic method, a dialectical approach to questioning and critical thinking. Known for his pursuit of ethical truths and moral principles, he engaged individuals in open-ended discussions that often revealed contradictions in their beliefs.…
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The resident doctors’ strike: Montreal, 1934
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “We don’t want him because he’s a Jew. But we are not antisemites.”1—From a statement by striking residents at Hôpital Notre-Dame, Montreal Samuel Rabinovitch, M.D., (1909–2010) graduated first in his class from the Faculté de Médecine of the University of Montreal in 1934. His four brothers were physicians. He applied for and…
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Stamping out preventive medicine
Michael EllmanWilmette, Illinois, United States In 1965, I became the Chief Preventive Medicine Officer of the United States Southern Command. One of the eleven unified commands of the Department of Defense, the Southern Command was headquartered in the Panama Canal Zone and represented our interests in South America, Central America, excluding Mexico, and the Caribbean—but…
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The changing role of the apothecary
JMS PearceHull, England Some of us oldies may remember the word “apothecary” above a pharmacist’s shop window or in old photographs (Fig 1). But how did the apothecaries come to be? And how did they relate to Medicine? There are early records of pharmacy in Mesopotamia around 2600 BC, the main elements being herbal remedies.…
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Book review: Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles That Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) was born on July 5, 1948, and on the seventy-fifth anniversary of its existence, British journalist and broadcaster Isabel Hardman has produced a book using military analogies to focus on the many political battles and political contests that have shaped its current form. The…
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John Douglas of the “high” stone operation
John Douglas was born in 1675 in Baads near Edinburgh. He had six brothers, the most famous being the anatomist James Douglas, remembered eponymously for describing the Pouch of Douglas (an extension of the peritoneal cavity into the pelvis). Another brother, Walter, served from 1711 to 1714 as governor general of the Leeward Islands, where…
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C. Walton Lillehei, father of open-heart surgery
Dr. Clarence Walton Lillehei (1918–1999) was born in Minneapolis, received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota in 1942, and spent his entire career on the staff of the University of Minnesota Medical School. In the early 1950s he began to experiment with cross-circulation, a technique in which the blood vessels of a patient…