Tag: Summer 2025
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Armand Trousseau: Physician, teacher, and innovator
Armand Trousseau (1801–1867) was one of the most important figures of 19th-century French medicine. His career spanned the era when medicine was transitioning from speculative theory to clinical observation, careful diagnosis, and systematic teaching. A physician of immense influence, Trousseau made significant contributions to the understanding of diseases ranging from croup and tuberculosis to cancer…
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Théodore Tronchin
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, Netherlands Life in eighteenth-century Geneva was idyllic in many ways. The religious wars had ended, epidemics were still far away, infant mortality was on the decline, Protestant immigrants were arriving, and money flowed into the city faster than the Rhône River. The city walls no longer seemed needed, yet still were there. The…
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Friedrich Welwitsch, physician and botanist (1806–1872)
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel I believe not too many people have heard of the Austrian physician-botanist Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872; Friderik Velbic in Slovene). He studied in Vienna and practiced medicine in Slovenia and Moravia. In 1839 he gave up medicine and concentrated on botany, moving to Portugal and becoming director of the botanical gardens. He studied first…
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Nathaniel Hawthorne: Medical
Although Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was not a physician, his writings often concern themselves with medicine and disease. His childhood was shadowed by illness. He injured his leg at age nine and had a long period of recovery and convalescence, being confined indoors for nearly two years. This period of immobility, often cited as the genesis…
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Mark Twain (1835-1910): Medical
Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, is remembered predominantly for creating Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the two boys whose adventures have delighted generations of readers. He rose from humble beginnings to being considered one of the funniest people of his time. Twain was a premature baby, not expected to live. When he turned four, his…
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George Gissing: The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
At the end of the nineteenth century, George Gissing (1857–1903) was one of the three most important English novelists of his time. Born in the north of England, he studied at the precursor of the University of Manchester, fell in love with a young prostitute, and began stealing from fellow students to support her. He…
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Decades in the trenches
Robert PietrzakWest Haven, Connecticut Seventy-six years have weathered this frame, yet nineteen still smolders—unyielding flame. In jungles of memory where nightmares reside, vines of the past knot heaven to hell’s side. The therapy chair groans beneath my weight, Dr. Martinez speaks—calm, measured, straight. “Trauma,” “processing”—echoes rebound, off bunker-thick walls where silence is sound. The world keeps a rhythm I’ve long cast…
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Henry Vandyke Carter (1831–1897)
JMS PearceHull, England There is no better-known medical textbook than Gray’s Anatomy. No doctor’s interest can fail to be aroused by someone whose student career begins with the triennial essay prize of Royal College of Surgeons of England. Thus began the all too brief career of Henry Gray (? 1827–1861). The Wellcome librarian Noel Poynter…
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Till Eulenspiegel: The mischievous trickster
Like Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel is a literary character who has never ceased to entertain generations of readers. He was first featured in medieval stories in which he ridiculed the foolishness and hypocrisy of the wealthy nobles, clergy, merchants, and in particular the impostor physicians and quacks. He is believed to have been born around…
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Jean Racine (1639–1699), tragedian of body and soul
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Jean Racine established himself as one of the two most accomplished composers of tragedy in the French language. Sharing this distinction with the earlier Piere Corneille, he drew his subjects mainly from mythology and Roman history, describing historical events and relating classical stories. He was raised after…