Tag: Vienna
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Movie review: Kings Row – Assassins in white coats
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Above all, I must not play God.”— Revised Hippocratic Oath2 Kings Row (1942) is a film set in a small American town in the early nineteen-hundreds. It features two doctors who are best avoided as well as a bright young man called Parris sent by his wealthy grandmother to study medicine in…
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Joseph Škoda (1805–1881)
Joseph Skoda. Charcoal drawing by Berger, 1883, after A. F. Baschta.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark Medicine in Vienna developed in two distinct phases.1-3 The first began in 1745 when Empress Maria Theresa on the advice of Herman Boerhaave4 invited Gerard van Swieten5 to become her personal physician. She also appointed him in charge of medical education,…
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Rejuvenation: “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States Ch’ io sono quell gran medico Dottore enciclpedico, Chiamato Dulcamara, . . . Rigiovnir bramate? I’m noted as a scientist, Practitioner and specialist. I’m Doctor Dulcamara … Would you like your youth recaptured? L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), music by Geatano Donizetti, Libretto by Felice Romano,…
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The life and death of Franz Schubert
Nicolas Robles Badajoz, Spain Figure 1. Pencil-on-paper caricature of singer Johann Michael Vogl (left) and composer Franz Schubert (right). The caption (in German) reads: Michael Vogl and Franz Schubert go out for battle and victory. Attributed to his friend, Franz von Schober – Original is in the Historic Museum of the City of Vienna.…
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Francis Henry Williams: the first American chest radiologist
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Williams performing fluoroscopy of chest. From the book by Williams, which is available on The Wellcome Library. Public domain. Francis Henry Williams was born in Massachusetts on July 15, 1852. His father was a professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Williams graduated in chemistry in 1873 from…
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How Britain rescued scientists from Nazi tyranny
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Signatories to Letter to The Times, 22 May 1933 In March 1933 while visiting Vienna, William Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics, learned that Hitler had just decreed it illegal for “non-Aryan,” mostly Jewish people to hold posts in the Civil Service. Many lawyers, doctors, and…
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The wayward Paracelsus
JMS Pearce East Yorks, England Fig 1. Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus). Via Wikimedia. Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest Let no man be another’s who can be himself Paracelsus 1552 Paracelsus was the most original, controversial character of the Renaissance,1 who brazenly questioned and condemned the dictates of Galen and…
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Anatomica: The exquisite and unsettling art of human anatomy
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The first known anatomy book was written around 300 BC by Diocles, a Greek philosopher and physician who based his work on animal dissections. Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani corpori Fabrica from 1543 was the first major work based on dissections of human cadavers. It dispelled many myths and challenged the…
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William John Adie (1886–1935)
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. WJ Adie. Source William John Adie (Fig 1) deserves to be remembered as an unusually gifted, compassionate clinician and teacher, but he is best known for his account of the myotonic (Holmes-Adie) pupil. One of many talented Australians who enhanced British medicine, Adie was born in Geelong, west…