Tag: Winter 2015
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The 8076th: a hospital with marching orders
Abigail Cline Augusta, Georgia United States November 22 was an unusually cold day at the American hospital in Kumchon County. Otherwise, it was business as usual in the sixty-bed facility. The doctors were scrubbing for surgery, nurses were moving patients among the wards, X-ray technicians were developing radiographs, and the pharmacy was dispensing prescriptions.…
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Leith in the time of cholera – the story of Thomas Latta
George Venters Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom Introduction An image of the apparatus Latta used during his procedures. In June 1832, the editor of the Lancet thanked Dr. Thomas Latta for “the intrepidity, scientific zeal and assiduity he has displayed.”1 This was in response to Dr. Latta’s letter reporting on his treatment by intravenous saline…
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Arthur Wohlmann and the Rotorua Health Spa
Stewart CameronHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Dr. Arthur Stanley Wohlmann played a pivotal role in the history of New Zealand despite his great project being a calamity. Even his discipline lost stature, yet Wohlmann himself retains a positive reputation in history. In the late 1800s, the British colony of New Zealand was promoting tourism as it…
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Elizabeth Fleischmann-Aschheim
Rebekah Abramovich New York, United States Fig 1. Fleischmann Examining a patient with a fluoroscope (Camera Craft, June 1901). Courtesy of Palmquist Elizabeth Fleischmann-Aschheim (1865–1905) opened California’s first X-ray photography laboratory in 1896, merely one year after Roentgen’s discovery. Over the course of the next decade, this unlikely figure would become one of the most…
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Ethical dilemmas in surrogacy
Ragini Kulkarni Maharashtra, India Photography by tipstimes.com/pregnancy Motherhood is the most beautiful and divine gift to a woman. Every woman has a dream and a natural instinct that she will become a mother and nurture a baby. Unfortunately for some couples fulfilling this dream becomes impossible due to medical reasons. In such cases the…
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Easy come, easy go
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece The invitation to talk to an informal gathering of his colleagues had come out of the blue. One of the major drug companies in his field had arranged to bring together a score of physicians in an educational opportunity to be held in one of the upper crust restaurants of…
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Since I could not stop death, he kindly stopped for me
Ruth Deming Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, United States Never were two sisters as close as Lori and I. It hardly mattered we were married and had our husbands, our passel of kids, and each earned a nice living at our jobs. Lori owned a string of nail salons in suburban Philadelphia called “Lorelei’s” while I…
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Kiran
Katherine Arnup Ottawa, Canada Photography by narice28 “We have a new man in Room 7,” the hospice co-ordinator explained in our morning briefing. “He’s 76, Indian, and very private. And he doesn’t like appellations.” “Appellations?” “You know, like ‘sweetie’, or ‘dear’. He doesn’t really like that sort of thing,” the coordinator explained. “Who…
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Comics as a means of observation and reflection
Rose Glennerster Brighton, United Kingdom Comics have long been used as a way of attacking cultural and political hierarchy, as has the art of caricature.1, 2 They can also be used as a way to explore and understand the link between the medical profession and the rest of society.3 My comic is not intended…
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Avicenna, the prince of physicians
Shireen RafeeqIslamabad, Pakistan When Husain Ibn Sina said in his memoirs that he understood all the sciences “as far as is humanly possible,” he was not exaggerating.1 Known to the West as Avicenna, he was one of the most extraordinary men ever to grace this earth. Sir William Osler called him “the prototype of the…