Tag: Winter 2019
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The smell of burning rubber: The fatal illness of George Gershwin
James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, USA George Gershwin, 28 March 1937. Photograph by Carl Van Vetchen. 1937. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. On the morning of Monday July 12, 1937, New Yorkers who had just suffered through five days of a heat wave that left thirty-eight people dead, awoke to read on the…
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William Gorgas – Life and medical legacy
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of William C. Gorgas. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. The Panama Canal Zone in the early 1900s was described as “one of the must unhealthful places in the world.”1 Ridden with mosquitoes, the Isthmus of Panama was a hotbed of yellow fever, malaria, and pneumonia. Previous efforts…
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Maintaining a moral compass in medicine
Jeffrey Lee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States “The Doctor.” Painting by Sir Luke Fildes, 1891. Location: Tate Gallery, London Fildes the doctor It seemed like just another day during my third-year surgical rotation until I heard Mrs. W. cry. It was during daily rounds in the bustling ICU, and our team was squeezed around a single…
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Joseph Warren: The forgotten founder
Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States Fig 1. The Leonard Zakim Bridge, Boston “If Warren had lived, Washington would have remained an obscurity.” – Peter Oliver, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court On June 17, a late spring New England morning, thousands of Bostonians will begin their day by traveling…
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The doctor becomes the patient: an internist’s journey from skepticism to gratitude
William Shimp Plantation, Florida, United States Abdominal section performed on a woman at Vienna, 10 November 1549. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0 Nothing grabs our attention more than being flattened by a diagnosis of significant illness. Mine arrived just a few weeks ago. For decades I had harbored a large hiatal hernia. I…
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Charles VIII: the king who bumped his head
Charles VIII was proclaimed king of France in 1470 at the age of thirteen and is remembered in history chiefly for invading Italy to assert his claim to the throne of Naples. He set in motion, by this invasion, a process that left Italy languishing under foreign domination for more than 300 years. During his…