Tag: Vignette
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Robin Williams: Death from Lewy body dementia
Mary Ellen KellyDublin, Ireland When the death of Robin Williams was announced on August 12, 2014, the world shed a tear. The passing of the acclaimed and adored actor came as a shock to many, the announcement by the Marin County sheriff’s office having specified that the cause of death was suicide and that Mr.…
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Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind
Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I opened my eyes. Then suddenly the room began to distort.…
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Shostakovich and the simian serenade
Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland One of the fascinations of medical humanities is the two-way traffic between artists and scientists with cutting-edge aspects of science, technology, and medicine. A signal example is the heady ferment of scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union. One of the more exotic experiments was the effort by Professor Ilya Ivanov to hybridize…
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Physicians as inventors
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel “Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure, and money.”—Albert Szent-Györgyi, 1937 Inventions can be created either following a sudden enlightenment (for which Claude Bernard coined the term être frappé—to be punched or after a long investigation). Relatively few physicians…
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The Popes and the Black Death in Avignon
Avignon in southeastern France stands as one of Europe’s most historically significant cities, commonly remembered as the seat of the Catholic papacy during the 14th century and for its famous bridge immortalized in song. It was a time of conflict and unstable conditions in Italy while the French King Philip IV was exerting pressure on…
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Francisco Javier de Balmis and the first international vaccination campaign
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Smallpox was a human scourge until the early nineteenth century. It had caused almost half a million deaths in Europe alone when Edward Jenner introduced vaccination into clinical practice in 1798 with his famous publication “An enquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae” and the 1801 publication “The…
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The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore
The history of medicine in Malaysia and Singapore spans centuries of healing activities derived from indigenous traditions, colonial influences, and scientific advances. Long before the colonial era, local communities practiced herbal medicine using ingredients derived from the tropical rainforest’s flora, using methods passed down through generations, often combining herbal remedies with rituals, incantations, and divination.…
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Imhotep: Humanity’s great physician and polymath
Brian O’DeaIllinois, United States Imhotep is regarded as one of history’s first polymaths, a man whose genius transcended disciplines. Few figures in the ancient world stand as tall as Imhotep. As vizier to the pharaoh Djoser of the third dynasty (c. 27th century BC), he envisioned the first major stone monument, the step pyramid at…
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Alix Joffroy in Brouillet’s A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
Lilian GleaveCork, Ireland While some students of Jean-Martin Charcot like Sigmund Freud and Joseph Babinski achieved enduring fame, the legacy of others is just as foundational. In André Brouillet’s 1887 painting A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière,1 a man stands by the window, his head supported by his hand, lit from behind. Some medical historians…