Tag: Vignettes
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William P. Murphy Jr., MD: Physician-inventor
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…An unqualified success.”– Dr. Murphy on the testing of blood bags during the Korean War It is perhaps no coincidence that the son of the physician who revolutionized the treatment of pernicious anemia should likewise have been an inventor. By the time he died in 2023 at the age of 100, Dr.…
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A migrant worker’s journey to becoming a brain surgeon
Saahas KumbamuSt. Johns, Florida, United States A year ago my parents gifted me Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon,the autobiography of Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, co-written by Mim Eichler Rivas. The book chronicles the remarkable journey of Dr. Q from Mexican migrant farm worker in Mendota, California to an esteemed…
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On Hortons among history
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel I believe I met Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in 1999 in Glasgow during the two-day symposium on Medicine & Literature on the 400-year anniversary of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. On that occasion, I also met and chatted with Professor William Bryan Jennett CBE…
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The root of all problems
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Several years ago, I had a neighbor in his eighties who was also my patient. Whenever the need arose I would visit him at home after office hours, and we would have an informal chat as his children were friends of mine from our school years. One evening, he asked me to…
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Thomas Wakley (1795–1862) and The Lancet
When in April 1820 five members of a radical group plotted to murder the British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, they were sentenced to be hanged as well as publicly decapitated and dissected. An unknown man wearing a mask appeared in the square and carried out the task with such speed and dexterity that people thought…
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Jeremy Bentham: Dead but not gone
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “How little service soever it may have been in my power to render to mankind during my lifetime, I shall at least be not altogether useless after my death.”1– Jeremy Bentham The English polymath Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. His collected works started to be assembled in…
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A belated reunion
A yellowing page of uncertain date from a Chicago newspaper tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl who had her legs crushed and her pelvis broken in an automobile accident. At the hospital, all experienced surgeons said the case was hopeless. But a young surgical intern undertook her care, visited her every day, and dressed…
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Charlotte Gilman, Weir Mitchell, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived a complex and controversial life.1 A prolific writer and lecturer, she advocated for the social, economic, and civic liberation of women.1 She was also a nationalist, eugenicist, and white supremacist.1 Despite her prominent feminist role, “today, Charlotte is primarily remembered for her haunting story [‘The…
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Agatha Christie’s poisons: Better dying through chemistry
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Everything is a poison. Nothing is a poison. It is all a matter of dose.”– Claude Bernard, French physiologist (1813–1878) Agatha Christie (1890–1976) wrote sixty-six detective novels, fourteen collections of short stories, and three plays. She is the best selling fiction writer ever published, with two billion books sold. Her works have…
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Limping into victory
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel There were people with disabilities in history who were not “limping into oblivion,”1 but rather paved their way to accomplishments and victories.2 The emperor Claudius, who may have had cerebral palsy or dystonia, reigned in the first century AD. During that time, the Roman Empire expanded greatly. He decreed that if…