Volume 2, Issue 3 – Fall 2010

The pianist

Steven Cheng, MD

Washington University

St. Louis, Missouri

She was barely five feet tall, an edentulous grandmotherly type who always seemed shocked to find such a large instrument awaiting her on stage. Seated before this familiar friend, she was utterly transformed. More…

Body heat: September 1944

Winona Winkler Wendth

Lancaster, Massachusetts

I traveled up to Terezin against my will. My writing instructor had made the assignment. “Just write down what you see,” he said at nine in the morning while we squeezed into the aisle of a public bus headed out from Prague. More…

Each day is magnified

Ronald Pies, MD

SUNY Upstate Medical University, New York

Suddenly and inexplicably I discovered that I was anemic. More…

Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

Dr. Christopher Cameron

Kelso, United Kingdom

The call came at two o’clock from John, a farmer/patient, who sounded puzzled and alarmed. More…

Just like that

Kanani Titchen

Thomas Jefferson University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“Happy New Year!” a small voice squeaked out with soft exuberance. I looked up at the clock to see it was midnight, and my hands remained wrapped around the tortuous jejunum of a man I had never met. More…

The Gone-A-Gram

Joel L. Chinitz, MD

Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania

Harry Crenshaw looked into the faces around the conference table. Why didn’t the hospital research committee take his project seriously? The study was valid and clinically applicable. Maybe Janine was right; he shouldn’t have called it “The Gone-A-Gram.” More…

I don’t know how it happened

Rae Brown, MD

University of Kentucky, Lexington

There are angels in every emergency room. They hear the laments of the doctors and nurses as they try to save a child. More…

When children die

Susan Woldenberg Butler

Canberra, Australia

Angus Easton died surrounded by loved ones who had done everything possible to ease his suffering. He was obviously the apple of his family’s eye, and no wonder. More…

The lesser of evils

Farrin A. Manian, MD, MPH

Infectious Diseases Consultants

St. Louis, Missouri

Before laying eyes on him, the nursing staff warned me that John was hinting about leaving the hospital no more than 24 hours after his admission. More…

Therapeutic beauty

Elizabeth Lee, PhD

Dickinson College

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

In the late 1880s, the painter Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921) and his family began summering in rural Dublin, New Hampshire. More…

The castrati: a physician’s perspective

James L. Franklin, MD
Hektoen Institute of Medicine Chicago, Illinois

One often reads that these operations were done by “barber surgeons,” but they were performed by surgeons who represented the highest echelons of the medical profession. More…

Poetry

Eliette Markhbein

Injuries clawing at freedom

I move in the backdrop of life

filled with unspent tears

arms heavy with renunciation

yet fighting to remain alive.

More…

John A. Vanek, MD

Christmas lights of red and green

twinkle on the monitor,

flash pulse and pressure, proclaim

the baby in this crib will live

for now.

More…

Richard D. Sontheimer, MD

He was a tall, thin, down-glancing man slumped low in a chair in the exam room corner.

His gray-haired wife sat primly next to him.

More…

Ron Domen, MD

It is important to know the stories

that surround our conception.

But leave out the part about the hormone

surge that expands the cumulus cells

More…

James B. Rickert, MD

They flock like crows, hawking for a bite of biscuit

Or bits of flesh. They caw with formulaic

Cadence and phrase

More…