Tag: Surgery
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The appendicitis conundrum
Jayant RadhakrishnanNathaniel KooDarien, Illinois, United States Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in the world. One would expect consensus regarding its management, but that has not been the case from the time the appendix was first identified. Galen (129–216 CE) was not permitted to dissect human bodies, so he dissected monkeys. Since…
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Infectious diseases in the Civil War
Lloyd Klein San Francisco, California, United States The main cause of death during the American Civil War was not battle injury but disease. About two-thirds of the 620,000 deaths of Civil War soldiers were caused by disease, including 63% of Union fatalities. Only 19% of Union soldiers died on the battlefield and 12% later succumbed to…
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Dr. Dominique Larrey
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Larrey provokes contractions on a recently amputated limb. Illustration from Les merveilles de la science, 1867-1891, Tome 1, by Louis Figuier. Paris: Furne, Jouvet. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Dominique Jean Larrey (1766-1842), the orphaned son of a shoemaker, was raised by an uncle who was a surgeon and became a…
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Wilhelm Baum (1799–1883)
Wilhelm Baum. Photograph of painting by Wilhelm Title. Uploaded by Mehlauge. Via Wikimedia. Postgraduate medical education in the nineteenth century required personal contact with the masters of the profession – working and rounding with them, or at least listening to their lectures. Thus the German surgeon Wilhelm Baum spent one year after obtaining his doctorate…
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Disaster code
Nohad Masri Beirut, Lebanon Aftermath. Artwork by Hala Masri, August 2020. It was six in the evening and we were finishing our hematology board virtual meeting. Because COVID-19 cases were again on the rise, the hospital staff was working at half capacity, with the other half at home. The chemotherapy unit patients had finished…
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Sacrifice
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Ruins of the basilica of St. Achillios, Lake Prespa, Greece. Photo by the author. The supine and inert feminine form has been reduced to a few square centimeters of uncovered skin between the jaw and the sternum. Strategically placed green surgical drapes shroud the rest of the body. A series…
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Pain versus survival
Marissa Armoogam Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies Painting of Jan De Doot by Carel van Savoyen. 1650s. Portrait Collection of the Laboratory of Pathology, Leiden University. Via Wikimedia. Pain has long been a given in any surgical procedure, but thanks to the many advances in medicine and particularly in anesthesia, the experience of insurmountable…
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Alexis Carrel: the sunshine and the shadow
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Alexis Carrel. Unknown photographer. 1912. From Popular Science Monthly Volume 81, on the Internet Archive. Via Wikimedia. Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was as complex as his glass perfusion pump apparatus. A brilliant research surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine before his fortieth birthday for his…
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A drawing created during World War I
Tilman Sauerbruch Bonn, Germany Fig 1. Portrait-drawing of the of the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch by Max Beckmann 1915 at the frontline during World War I (private collection). A photograph of a drawing by Max Beckmann (1884-1950) of the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951) has been hanging in my room since my student days (Fig. 1).…
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Women surgeons
Moustapha Abousamra Ventura, California, United States Cactus flower with buds.Image courtesy of the author. Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire…