Tag: Winter 2022
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A detailed depiction of a “crime scene” circa 1455
Daniel GelfmanIndianapolis, Indiana, United States The use of forensic science to determine the etiology and manner of death has been attempted for millennia. Early autopsies involved inspection of the deceased individual and possibly an internal examination. The performance of autopsies has been greatly influenced by religious and political forces.1 There is a record of the…
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JLW Thudichum: neglected “Father of neurochemistry”
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Knowledge of diseases of the nervous system reflects an understanding of the basic sciences of neural mechanisms and organization. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Nobel prizewinners Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal founded the neuron doctrine, and Charles Scott Sherrington explained the propagation of the…
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Silas Weir Mitchell and causalgia
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Silas Weir Mitchell (1829 – 1914) (Fig 1) was born in Philadelphia, the seventh physician in three generations. Webb Haymaker gives an early clue to his unconventional personality when he recounts his smuggling of Frederick Marryat’s Midshipman Easy into a dark corner of a church pew to relieve the boredom…
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Neurophobia or neuroavoidance: a student or educator issue?
Kelsey AndrewsJack Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”– Albert Einstein Jozefowicz introduced a new term in neurology education literature in 1994, defining “neurophobia” as “a fear of the neurosciences and clinical neurology that is due to the student’s inability…
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Vigil
Terri EricksonPfafftown, North Carolina, United States In a care home in Göteborg, Sweden, my husband’s sister, Jensina, sits vigil at the bedside of their Aunt Astrid, who is dying. She holds her hand, speaks to her as if everything is as it was, the two of them talking in Astrid’s apartment, her sharp mind and…
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On the death of a hospital volunteer
Bonnie SalomonLake Forest, Illinois, United States Golf course greens were not for you—too quiet. No cruise ships to sail—too boring. Retirement held no enchantment for you. Instead, you chose us— —the motley ER crew—hardly noticed, gliding through white coats and scrubs. “Just made fresh coffee,”—your calling card. How many cups after fifteen years? You were…
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De Profundis: Oscar Wilde’s narrative of mental anguish
Anthony ChesebroStony Brook, New York, United States “There is only one season, the season of sorrow.”1 Imprisoned for a relationship that was criminalized by the government of his time, in 1897 Oscar Wilde had spent two years in jail. Finally granted permission to write, over a period of three months he produced De Profundis, an…
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Robert Bentley Todd
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Students of King’s College Hospital London are familiar with the Todd Prize in Clinical Medicine and with Todd Ward. Robert Bentley Todd’s father, Charles Hawkes Todd, was a well-known surgeon of 3 Kildare Street Dublin. His mother was Elizabeth Bentley, a relative of the poet Oliver Goldsmith, who was himself…
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Flesh on flesh
Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States There is a solace to flesh on flesh, a laying on of the hands, a ritual of caring, but now, in our distant worlds, we hide in pixeled foxholes, tap, tap, tapping on computers, tablets, and cell phones, the patient unseen and untouched. PAUL ROUSSEAU (he/his/him) is a semi-retired…