Tag: vision
-
“Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease”
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Hair loss in child with tinea capitis infection. CDC, 1970. Public domain. Overconfidence is an undesirable quality. It does not enhance a physician’s approach to learning, nor to changing when change is needed. How a doctor diagnoses or treats a condition today may cause future generations of physicians to wonder,…
-
“Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing
Katherine Harvey London, England, United Kingdom A medieval miniature showing St Mark reading a book and holding spectacles to his eyes. From Jean Poyer, The Tilliot Hours (c. 1500), The British Library. On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half…
-
Ignes Fatui of the neurotic mind
Ashten R. Duncan Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States Rocking in my vessel sturdy Upon the waters of a swamp so dirty, I am in the crow’s nest En route to my impending test. Ever since I was young, I have been given to the far-flung: Quiet panic of a possible foe, Wishes to never disturb…
-
Nature telling her secrets: the Kepler–Descartes connection
Ronald Fishman Chicago, Illinois, United States Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Nature tells us one secret in terms of another, and she may refuse to disclose one secret until another has been laid bare. – T.S. Kuhn1 In 1604, Johannes Kepler solved the problem of how light is refracted within the eye to produce an image on the…
-
Monet and his cataracts
Peter KopplinToronto, Ontario, Canada In January 1923, the elderly artist Claude Monet struggled restlessly in his room after his cataract surgery. He got up and tore at his bandages.1 His family put it down to his temperament. But an elderly man in his eighties, immobilized, recovering from surgery with limited sight in the left eye…