Tag: Tuberculosis
-
Simon Flexner, infectious diseases pioneer
Simon Flexner. circa 1930s. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Source, Infectious diseases shaped the life of Simon Flexner, who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful and prominent scientists in American medicine. His contributions to the field of infectious diseases were legion. He became the first chairman of pathology at…
-
Girolamo Cardano: Renaissance physician and polymath
Born at Pavia in the duchy of Lombardy in 1501, Girolamo Cardano practiced medicine for fifty years but is remembered chiefly as a polymath. He composed 200 works, made important contributions to mathematics and algebra, invented several mechanical devices (some still in use today), and published extensive philosophical tracts and commentaries on the ancient philosophers…
-
Novalis: The white plague and the blue flower
Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Bust of Novalis at Nikolaifriedhof (Weiβenfels). Photo by Doris Antony on Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-2.5. Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr1 von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of early German Romanticism. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name “Novalis” from his twelfth-century…
-
Doctor Johnson and his ailments
Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. c. 1770. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales. Public domain. Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest English literary figures of all time, is remembered more for what he said than for what he wrote. Other writers may have been more successful or more profound, but none had as great…
-
Robert Louis Stevenson and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, USA Fig. 1: Edward Joseph F. Timmons, Stevenson House, ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Collection of the Union League Club Chicago. Famed Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) traveled to Monterey, California, in 1879 and lived for three months on the second floor of a white adobe boarding house called…
-
What did Dorothy Reed See?
Sara NassarCairo, Egypt “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”1– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall opened the doors of medicine at a time when women were considered incapable of managing this “gory” field. Although Reed’s eponymous Reed-Sternberg cell was a pivotal discovery for the…
-
“The Sick Child” in Scandinavian art
Göran WettrellSweden Within Western figurative pictorial art there has long been an interest in showing sick children, their psychological attitudes, the effects on the family, and indeed the very reality of disease. One of the best known works on this subject is by Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) of the Dutch Golden Age of painting. Titled The…