Tag: Winter 2021
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Compassion
Charles HalstedDavis, California, United States Formed and found in the human soul lies the wellspring of compassion.Seeing yourself in the other, the other in yourself is the essence of compassion. Selfless caring without condition for the unfortunate ones without voice,feeling the pain of another, accepting without judgment is compassion. Caring for someone in need or…
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Rage against the machine
Kaitlin KanVillanova, Pennsylvania, United States It was almost as if the neuromodulation clinic was the machine itself. The entire ward was U-shaped, with each arm housing preparation and recovery and the treatment suite nestled in the middle. Each patient was scheduled to the moment; nurses were on a constant cycle of ushering in and wheeling…
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Companionable books
“Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of life. “By companionable books I mean…
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Emblems and psychological medicine on the Sutton Hoo purse
Stephen MartinDurham, England, and Thailand The recent film The Dig1 has brought into the wider public eye the story of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial.2 The burial mound, at Sutton Hoo, in Sussex, England,3,4 contained a high-status figure, almost certainly Royal. The most expensive of the grave goods5 are high-craftsmanship gold, set with very finely-cut garnets…
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Encephalitis lethargica
Encephalitis lethargica was a worldwide epidemic during the years 1918-1930 that resembled influenza. It was first described in Vienna in 1916 by Constantin von Economo in thirteen patients suffering from unusual neurological symptoms that he thought constituted a new entity and called encephalitis lethargica. Similar cases were described at the same time in a French…
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Ancient Greek plague and coronavirus
Patrick BellBelfast, Northern Ireland Introduction Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War have been termed “the three earliest, and arguably most influential, representations of the plague in Western narrative.”1 This essay uses these historical sources to examine attitudes toward plague in ancient Greece and parallels in the modern response…
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The loneliness of the long-living doctor
Peter Arnold Sydney, Australia A noticeable phenomenon of the twenty-first century is the increasing frequency of friendships between older men. The importance of such friendships to both mental and physical health has been well documented.1,2,3 This issue has particular relevance to older male doctors, especially in the UK, where doctors tend to retire early.4 Many…
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To wear or not to wear? Attitudes towards mask wearing then and now
Mariella ScerriVictor GrechMellieha, Malta More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged around the globe, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial frontlines in the battle against the virus. However, in a volatile environment induced by a pandemic, the use of masks also stoked political division. Although medical authorities urged the…
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Selman Waksman, “father of antibiotics” and conquest of tuberculosis
Selman Abraham Waksman came to the United States in 1910 and worked for a few years on a farm in New Jersey. Born in a rural town in Ukraine in 1888, he had become familiar as a child with that country’s rich black soil and developed an interest that later influenced the direction of his…
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The derailment of Franklin Pierce
Jacob Appel New York, New York, United States Few subjects have attracted as much attention from medical historians, both well-founded and speculative, as the health of United States presidents. Considerable debate exists over the extent of impairment caused by Lincoln’s bouts of melancholia,1 Grant’s alcoholism,2 Wilson’s stroke,3 and Coolidge’s depression4—to name only those chief executives from…