Tag: The Lancet
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Thomas Wakley (1795–1862) and The Lancet
When in April 1820 five members of a radical group plotted to murder the British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, they were sentenced to be hanged as well as publicly decapitated and dissected. An unknown man wearing a mask appeared in the square and carried out the task with such speed and dexterity that people thought…
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Huntington’s chorea
JMS PearceHull, England In the history of medicine, few writers can have received a finer accolade than that bestowed by William Osler on George Huntington. Osler commented: “In the whole range of descriptive nosology there is not to my knowledge, an instance in which a disease has been so accurately and fully delineated in so…
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A fatal and mysterious illness
Michael D. Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In late 1972, a flurry of letters began to appear in the British medical journal The Lancet which captured the alarm, the bafflement, and the intense professional curiosity aroused by a mysterious new illness. The illness was unique to patients receiving hemodialysis, typically those who had been…
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Socrates on clinical excellence
George Dunea Chicago, IL Originally published in The Lancet, September 1, 1973, pp. 493–494 The year is 410 B.C. Socrates and the physician Democedes are walking in a shady grove on the road to Megara. Dem: Can you tell me, Socrates, how does one achieve excellence in clinical medicine? Can excellence be taught,…