Tag: Vignette
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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…
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The Latest Decalogue
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) Thou shalt have one God only; who Would tax himself to worship two? God’s image nowhere shalt thou see, Save haply in the currency: Swear not at all; since for thy curse Thine enemy is not the worse: At church on Sunday to attend Will help to keep the world thy friend: Honor thy parents; that is, all From whom…
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On extracampine hallucinations and Alexander Selkirk
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel In what may be justifiably described as the “third man factor syndrome,” some people may experience the hallucination that another person is present with them in the room. The long-term war correspondent Sebastian Junger described such a phenomenon when, during an emergency surgery for a ruptured aneurysm, he had imagined that…
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Pauline Chaponnière-Chaix
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Pauline Chaponnière-Chaix (1850–1934) was a nurse and activist born in Geneva, Switzerland. After her husband died, she went to Paris to join the House of Deaconesses of Reuilly, a Protestant religious community founded in 1841 that provided outreach to the poor. Chaponnière-Chaix worked with children whose parents were in prison or in other…
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V.V. Veresaev, another forgotten physician-author
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Dr. Veresaev was born in Tula as Vikenty Vikentyevich Smidowitz in 1867, son of a famous Polish-Catholic physician father and a Russian mother. Raised and educated in Russia, his father established a free-of-charge hospital in Tula. First to introduce sanitary and hygienic principles to the city, his father ironically died in…
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Caravaggio: Beauty and crime intertwined
Born in Milan in 1571 and orphaned by the plague in 1577, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio made his way to Rome in 1592, where he enrolled the lowlife of the city, its prostitutes, thieves, and other undesirables, in order to paint the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and the Apostles and saints of the New Testament and…
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Titian: The mastery of color and the perils of paint
Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/90–1576) hailed from Pieve di Cadore, near Venice. He trained first in the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato and subsequently with the acclaimed Giovanni Bellini, while his close relationship and collaboration with the influential Giorgione greatly shaped his early style. Titian’s early commissions included the Scuola di San Antonio frescoes in…
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The Celts, early inhabitants of Europe
The Celts, a collection of Indo-European tribes, shared common linguistic and cultural traditions. They controlled extensive territories across Europe from 1200 BCE to 400 CE, spanning from Ireland and Scotland to Anatolia and from the Netherlands to Spain and Italy. Greek and Roman observers frequently wrote about the Celts in negative terms but also expressed their admiration for them. The main Celtic…
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The Trinity Plague Column in Budapest
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England In the Buda Castle district of the city of Budapest, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there is an elegant square in front of the famous centuries-old Matthias Church with its imposing Gothic spire. This site was a mosque during the Ottoman invasion before being rebuilt as a church in a Baroque style in…
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Sir Edward Elgar, pioneer of English music
Sir Edward Elgar raised English music to prominence at a time when it was dominated by continental composers. Renowned for his The Dream of Gerontius oratorio (1900), Enigma Variations (1899), the Pomp and Circumstance marches (1901–1930), a Violin Concerto (1910), a Cello Concerto (1919), two symphonies, and many other compositions, he became one of the…