Tag: Vignette
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Andronicus III, malaria, and Byzantium
The decline and fall of the over one-thousand-year-old Byzantine empire constitutes an epic tragedy. Year after year, decade after decade, this once great empire became weaker and less likely to survive. In 1204, the Crusaders and Venetians conquered and plundered its capital, Constantinople, and divided the empire into four kingdoms. A newly established Latin empire…
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Pertussis—A new or ancient disease?
Pertussis is a respiratory disease characterized by the whoop, the sound made by patients during coughing fits, and popularly known as whooping cough. It may be a more ancient disease than is usually assumed. Mentioned in an ancient Chinese medical classic from before the first century, it was described during the Sui Dynasty by the…
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Eugène J. Woillez (1811–1882)
Eugène Woillez was born in the town of Montreuil sur Mer, near Calais, in 1811, one year before Napoleon committed the colossal error of invading Russia. As a young man, Woillez studied the sciences and arts, and spent his leisure painting with watercolors, playing musical instruments, and dabbling in lithography under the pseudonym Ozelli (his…
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Nonsense poetry
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently, I read the Israeli professor Rony Reich’s translation of German nonsense poetry (Deutsche Unsinnpoesie), and among them, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Lügenmärchen (Lying Fairy Tales). I translate from the Hebrew: …Three wished to catch a hare,On crutches they came—a team.One was deaf,The second blind, the third mute.And the fourth could…
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Ming the clam: Methodical measurement of the maturity of the Methuselah of mollusks
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Clams don’t carry birth certificates.”– Samantha Larson, National Geographic1 The maximum human lifespan is about 120 years, and research continues to find ways to increase that maximum. Knowing the maximum lifespan of other species and how they manage to achieve it may be of value. Zoologists have two strict criteria when defining…
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Living behind a mask (Is it being one’s self?)
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States In my retirement in Lincoln, I have found myself looking back at life. Those memories brought me smiles, but that is not what I want to share now. It is the memories that did not bring smiles. It is the memories of embarrassment and remorse after regretful behavior. And because…
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Errare humanum est
Bob ScottScotland “Erring is human; not to, animal”– Robert Frost, The White-tailed Hornet Why is it so difficult to face up to our shortcomings? It is more than 300 years since Alexander Pope wrote1 that a defining characteristic of humankind was to err, while granting forgiveness was at the discretion of a god. Robert Frost’s…
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Dying young: Bob Marley (1945–1981)
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “In the community of living tissues, the uncontrolled mob of misfits that is cancer behaves like a gang of perpetually wilding adolescents. They are the juvenile delinquents of cellular society.”– Sherwin Nuland, MD, How We Die Bob Marley (1945–1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician, and the son of a Jamaican mother…
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Passing sentence
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece The man facing me across the desk is outwardly calm. He gives an innocent enough history of a vague pain in his back which eventually led his family physician to send him for a chest film. Something did not look right, and a computed lung scan followed. This was the reason for…