Vol 1, Issue 1
Fall 2008 ISSN 2155-3017
Music BoxThe Sound of One Hand Clapping: Meditations on Sinistrality
It all began on the coldest morning of the season in early December 2006. Painters were still in our apartment putting the finishing touches on what had proven to be an all too prolonged renovation project. However—the end was now in sight, and I was dearly anticipating a return to normalcy. Rushing home with packages in both hands including hot soup purchased for a lunch I hoped to share with my wife, I tripped and fell crossing the street at the corner of Rush (ominously named) and Bellevue on Chicago’s near North Side. More… |
Presented on April 7, 2008, by James L. Franklin, MD.
Medical History
Death in ancient timesArticle written by George Dunea, MD, President and CEO of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine for the British Medical Journal. “Many a physician has slain a king!” the emperor Hadrian shouted aloud as he lay on his deathbed. But Augustus when he was near death gathered his friends to ask if, in the manner of actors, he deserved applause for having played well his assigned role in the human comedy; and Vespasian, weak to the point of fainting during his last illness, refused to lie down, insisting that an emperor must die standing. Attila, the Scourge of God, terrified his bride by suffocating on his wedding night after vomiting an immense torrent of blood. Alaric, the Visigoth king who sacked Rome in AD 426, forever foiled the curiosity of posterity by ordering a river to be diverted to hide his bones at the bottom. The emperor Claudius was probably killed by his wife Agrippina with a dish of poisoned mushrooms. More… |
Literary EssaysPassion, compassion, confusion and other emotions in stories of sickness and healersJohn Last, MD. FRACP, FRCPC; University of Ottawa; Ottawa, Canada Text based on a talk in a Symposium on “The role of the medical humanities in education and healing”, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, May 19, 1999. A complete physician needs insight transcending the knowledge, skills and attitudes that professional training provides. How can this be achieved? Personal experience of illness and suffering, or that of a close family member or a loved one, can do it. It is painful, but it can be a good way to comprehend the complexities of life, and of human nature. |
Reprints from The British Medical Journal, Soundings and Letter…from ChicagoIf I ruled the worldArticles written by George Dunea, MD, President and CEO of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine. In the first year of my dictatorship I will ban sugar coated doughnuts, atonal music, phenylbutazone, and hospital public relations departments. With the ruthlessness of irrational dictators I will outlaw multivitamin pills, ties with horizontal stripes, malpractice lawyers, useless expensive drugs, and hot and cold water taps that turn in opposite directions. More… Many physicians have slain a king
Beastly handwrittingIt has long been a widely accepted fact especially among patients, nurses, and pharmacists that doctors have far worse handwriting than most other so called learned professionals. Recent studies have largely confirmed this popular belief, one such study (1979) finding that 16% of doctors wrote quite illegibly and that another 17% were barely legible. More… |
Modern tourists know Hadrian mainly for his mausoleum in Rome or for the wall that he built in the north of England to keep out the barbarians. Historians think of him as an effective emperor and a capable administrator. But he was also a complex personality, full of contradictions during his reign as well as during a lengthy illness characterized by intractable anasarca. 
