Tag: Winter 2017
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The free diaper delivery and chat service
Jean MathewsCanada It surprised me that she could laugh. How could a person who was constantly leaking urine laugh? All her sarees and her tiny room smelled of urine. The smell was stubborn and enduring, compelling us to inhale meekly as we would at a public urinal. The smell also compelled her to spend all…
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Moritz Romberg
Like many other pioneers in the medical sciences, Moritz Romberg would hardly be remembered today were it not for his description of a test that, just as Joseph Babinksi’s, is still part of the routine neurologic examination. The Romberg test is deemed to be positive when the patient becomes unsteady on standing with feet together…
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Ernest Black Struthers: missionary life, kala azar, and military strife
Peter KopplinToronto, Canada In 1934 the third edition of Cecil’s A Textbook of Medicine contained a chapter by an academically obscure missionary in China.1 Russell Cecil, still editing the book by himself with only the help of a neurology colleague, chose Ernest Black Struthers to write about kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis). Most North American physicians…
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Measure of the heart: Santorio Santorio and the pulsilogium
Richard de GrijsDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China The heart is a musical organ. The irregularity of one’s inhalation and exhalation of air defies musicality, while the involuntary rumbling of moving gas in the intestines is embarrassingly analogous to the timbre of the tuba or trombone. Biomedical terminology and poetry are seemingly antithetical, but of the heart they…
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About face: From revulsion to compassion
Sylvia R. KarasuNew York City, New York, United States “I was too ugly to go to school,” writes Lucy Grealy in her painful memoir Autobiography of a Face.1 At the age of nine, Grealy was diagnosed with a rare Ewing’s sarcoma of her jaw that necessitated disfiguring surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. “I was my face,”…
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Hume and autism-causing vaccines
Trevor KleeCambridge, Massachusetts, United States In 1998 the British medical researcher Andrew Wakefield announced a startling discovery in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet. He had found that the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine seemed to have caused both bowel disease and autism in children.1 This was startling because the MMR vaccine…
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Frances Oldham Kelsey: A medical profile in courage
Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States Her name has disappeared into the vault of medical history and her dedication to scientific rigor and patient safety has been largely forgotten. Yet her silent but tangible legacy continues to this day. Born in Canada in 1914, Frances Oldham Kelsey received a BSc (1934) and MSc (1935) in…
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Waiting for results
Susan AndersonMadison, Wisconsin, United States You do not realize you have been holding your breath for weeks, until you see the new email hinting the results are in. You do not realize the tension you are feeling because you have put all feelings about “The Medical Situation” on hold, waiting for results. You do not…
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A year in oblivion – an artistic journey
Mara BuckWindsor, Maine, United States My grandmother had a saying, “What is, is. What ain’t, ain’t.” Simplistic to the core, but truth often is just that. Her saying did not apply to cancer because cancer did not run in our family. That is, not before me. It has been a couple decades since my breast…
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Mixing medicine – Religion and science
Aneesa BodiatSouth Africa The ameer chewed on the dry date my husband had presented to him, saying a prayer and then placing the chewed fruit back into the container, sealing it for use in a few days when my baby boy would be born. This particular ameer or religious leader was from Medina, the holy…