Tag Archives: The Lancet

Huntington’s chorea

November 23, 2022

JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. George Huntington’s 1872 paper “On Chorea.” 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 […]

William Marsden, surgeon and founder of the Royal Free and Royal Marsden Hospitals, London

October 14, 2020

Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Portrait of William Marsden by Thomas Illidge 1850. Picture in public domain. Source To found one hospital is a fairly unusual achievement; to found two is a rare feat indeed. William Marsden, a nineteenth-century British doctor, founded both the Royal Free Hospital and the Royal Cancer Hospital (now known […]

Early clinical and molecular discoveries in Long QT Syndrome

March 9, 2020

Göran Wettrell Sweden   Fig. 1 Anton Jervell, Norwegian physician, hospital manager and later professor at the University of Oslo with research on heart diseases. Source Sudden and unexpected death in people who are less than thirty-five years of age is associated with negative autopsy results in forty percent of cases.1 Long QT Syndrome (LQTS) […]

A fatal and mysterious illness

September 11, 2018

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 […]

Socrates on clinical excellence

January 29, 2017

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, […]