Tag: Winter 2013
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Gregor goes to the doctor
Larry ZaroffPalo Alto, California, United States My clinic is far North in Acres, Montana, perversely, a small town near the Canadian border, where, in October, without permission the dark sneaks in early. My work here, after twenty-six years as a cardiac surgeon in Los Angeles, is the way I want it, a quiet general practice…
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Pediatric pishogues
C. Anthony RyanBridget MaherCork, Ireland Although superstitions abound in all societies, Irish tradition has an especially long and rich tradition of folk beliefs and superstitions. Thus, when a newborn infant was recently diagnosed with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome,1 a triad of port-wine stain, varicose veins, and hypertrophy, his mother burst out crying saying: “My mother says that…
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Guillain–Barré – Vanishing twin
John VanekSt. Petersburg, Florida, USA Poet’s statement Poetry provides a vehicle that takes me to places that logic won’t go, a way of understanding the incomprehensible, both in life and in medicine. I now prescribe poetry PRN, but warn that it may hurt a little. My poems are peopled with my family, friends, and patients.…
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The Royal London Hospital
Peter HartChicago, Illinois, United States The Royal London Hospital, known as The London, is one of the largest and busiest hospitals in England and has an international reputation for excellence in many fields of medicine and dentistry. It was founded in 1740, at a time when London had become the largest city in Europe and…
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Edgar Allen Poe and The Masque of the Red Death
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially…
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Doctor and dictionary
For almost two decades beginning in 1882, Dr. William Chester Minor, retired army surgeon and captain of the Union Army during the American Civil War, labored unceasingly, day after day, reading and researching sixteenth and seventeenth century books, making notes on more than 12,000 slips of paper, and mailing them to the Scriptorium of Dr.…
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The last illness of Père Goriot
“It is all up with him, or I am much mistaken! Something very extraordinary must have taken place; he looks to me as if he were in imminent danger of serous apoplexy. The lower part of his face is composed enough, but the upper part is drawn and distorted. Then there is that peculiar look…
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The doctor as writer (William Carlos Williams)
“[Some people] naïvely ask him, ‘How do you do it? How can you carry on an active business like that and at the same time find time to write? You must be superhuman. You must have at the very least the energy of two men.’ But they do not grasp that one occupation complements the…
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The sweating sickness in Tudor England: A plague of the Renaissance
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction In the recent semi-fictional work by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, which takes place in the early 16th century, the protagonist Thomas Cromwell, counsel and henchman of Henry VIII, awakens in the morning to find his wife sleeping, but the sheets are damp.1 “She is warm and flushed.” He…
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The aftermath of trauma
Shaili JainCalifornia, United States The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government. This writing is a work of nonfiction. In an effort to protect individual patient privacy, the patient stories depicted…