Tag: Winter 2021
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Twins
John Graham-PoleClydesdale, Nova Scotia, Canada Why was she taken? While you remain to question me for your school project? Renee had a project. Her seventh-grade class had been set the task of composing an essay on some aspect of American society. She had settled on tackling the American healthcare system, and after some thought had…
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Giorgio Baglivi and The Practice of Physick
James MarcumWaco, Texas, United States “To form a right Judgment of Diseases, is a very difficult Matter.” With this opening sentence, Giorgio Baglivi (Figure 1) began his 1696 treatise De Praxi Medica, which was translated in 1704 as The Practice of Physick (Figure 2).1 Throughout the treatise, he frames the problems plaguing late seventeenth and…
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Lucid interval
Emma ManuelEshwar RajeshChennai, India Even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, some people like me were silently grateful for the opportunity to spend some time with their family. Born as a single child whose parents got frequent transfers, I had lived with my grandparents to get proper schooling, and then some twenty years passed…
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One chaplain’s journey: Teaching, hospice, and humanities
Terry McIntyreForest Park, Illinois, United States Auburn University was an easy choice for a graduate student with two preschool youngsters. Teaching medieval literature was the draw. Later, a divorce necessitated working as a project manager in sub-contracting. When the Lutheran campus pastor in Ann Arbor wanted me on the property committee, I declined. Instead, I…
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Omentum: Much more than “policeman of the abdomen”
Ashok SinghChicago, Illinois, United States The omentum is a curtain-like tissue that hangs from the bottom edge of the stomach and covers the abdominal organs below. It is a lattice of adipose (fat) cells peppered with islands of compact tissue known as milky spots, which are clusters of macrophages, lymphocytes, and hematopoietic cells. The omentum…
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The men who defeated syphilis
Beginnings The origins of syphilis have been subject to much debate. The disease has been claimed to be thousands of years old and originally to have evolved from yaws. Generally mistaken for leprosy and not recognized as a separate entity, it might have taken the form of a mild disease, prevalent in societies whose inhabitants…
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Book review: Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Gavin Francis is a Scottish doctor, author, and traveler who has worked in emergency medicine, family medicine, and as the resident doctor for the Antarctic survey, which resulted in a previous book. His wanderlust and way with words have been favorably compared to the late Bruce Chatwin. Island Dreams: Mapping…
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Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852)
JMS Pearce Hull, England It is undeniable that computer science and technology play an important part in medical investigation and research, and universally in the transmission of information. Everyone remembers Charles Babbage, (1791-1871) (Fig 1) inventor of the computer and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, but an almost equally important figure has been largely overlooked.…
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Fortunio Liceti (1577-1567)—Aristotelean teratologist
Fortunio Liceti’s mother was seven months pregnant when on a sea voyage to Rapallo (on the coast of Liguria) she went into labor—supposedly because of the motions of the ship. It has been said that her baby was so small that it fit into the palm of one hand. The father, a physician, placed it…