Tag: Winter 2026
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Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind
Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I opened my eyes. Then suddenly the room began to distort.…
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Shostakovich and the simian serenade
Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland One of the fascinations of medical humanities is the two-way traffic between artists and scientists with cutting-edge aspects of science, technology, and medicine. A signal example is the heady ferment of scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union. One of the more exotic experiments was the effort by Professor Ilya Ivanov to hybridize…
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Mercurochrome
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States It’s easy to spot a boy… He smells of licorice, he smells of mice, Of Mercurochrome, and vanilla ice.—Ogden Nash, A Boy is a Boy (1961)1 Visiting the World Heritage Ngorongoro Conservation Area on a safari expedition in Tanzania in 2018, I managed to scrape my shin against a sharp rock and…
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The chemistry of coffee and the paradox of balance
Rao UppuBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States Coffee is more than a daily stimulant; it is a quiet lesson in biological balance. The long-running debate over whether coffee is “good” or “bad” increasingly shows that, for most people, moderate intake—about one to three cups a day—sits comfortably within that balance. Coffee also carries cultural meaning, reminding…
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Thoughts in a hospital elevator
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece It is New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, and as I ride the hospital elevator down to the underground car park, oddly but not inexplicably I think about life and death. Ever since I started medical practice, at the end of each year, I go through my records and…
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Identity beyond memory: Rethinking early onset Alzheimer’s disease
Firas Ghanem Beirut, LebanonNancy ChedidCambridge, Massachusetts, United States “On my good days, I can almost pass for a normal person, and on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of…
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Brain surgery, now and then
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland In Michael Crichton’s novel The Terminal Man (1972), Harry Benson undergoes brain surgery at the hands of Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, Los Angeles.1 By implanting electrodes deep in Benson’s brain, McPherson plans to cure him of the violent seizures that require him to be guarded by…
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The doctors of Thomas Hardy
In his widely read novels, Thomas Hardy describes life in late nineteenth-century England, when truly effective medical remedies were exceedingly few and doctors were greatly limited in what they could achieve. Conditions were worse in rural areas, where poverty was an additional factor in determining the outcome of illnesses. Although doctors in Hardy’s novels typically have…