Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) lesions. More information at the Public Health Image Library.  “In the community of living tissues, the uncontrolled mob of misfits that is cancer behaves like a gang of perpetually wilding adolescents. They are the juvenile delinquents of cellular society.” – Sherwin Nuland, MD, How We Die Bob Marley (1945–1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician, and the son of a Jamaican mother and a white English father. He started singing professionally in 1963, and his music was rapidly appreciated. He and his group eventually ..read more

Medical conferences are an opportunity to travel and to meet. During the early days when renal transplantation, dialysis, and biopsy revolutionized nephrology, I had the opportunity to meet many members of the new discipline. I once listened to Jean Hamburger lecture about kidney transplants. I heard Robert Schrier lecture on salt and water. One summer night, I walked to my hotel room with George Schreiner at three in the morning after a very prolonged renal dinner. Once standing before a poster on calcium metabolism, I heard a famous professor ask, “We know what they did in Sodom, but what d ..read more

Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece  Lake Prespa, Greece. Photo by author.  The man facing me across the desk is outwardly calm. He gives an innocent enough history of a vague pain in his back which eventually led his family physician to send him for a chest film. Something did not look right, and a computed lung scan followed. This was the reason for his presence in my office. The scan images tell a grim tale. The mass in the right hilum with a bulky complement of lymph nodes, combined with a heavy smoking past, does not bode well. The whole appearance is that of an inoperable ..read more

Deema al Yousuf Kathryn Cobain Shagun Misra David Jeffrey Worcester, United Kingdom Background “The Caretaker by Harold Pinter”. Photo by Ross Angus on Flickr. CC BY 2.0.  The UK’s Mental Capacity Act (2005) stresses the importance of patient involvement in the process of informed consent through shared decision-making.1 A workshop was held for forty-one first-year graduate medical students to raise their awareness of this Act. To stimulate their interest, an extract of Clive Donner’s 1963 film The Caretaker was used to provoke reflection and discussion.2,3 The film is based upon the play ..read more

Mirjana Stojković-Ivković Belgrade, Serbia Mileva with sons. Mileva Marić was the first wife of Albert Einstein. Although she worked with him for many years, her overall contribution to his success has never been clearly determined. She was born in Serbia in 1875 and had one leg shorter than the other, which caused her to limp. She had a brilliant intellect and graduated in 1890 at a time when Serbia was among the few countries in which girls could attend secondary school. In 1896 she went to study mathematics and physics at the University of Zurich, the only woman to pass its extremely diffic ..read more

Julius Bonello Ajoke Iromini Peoria, Illinois, United States A procedure that removes a live fetus through an abdominal incision in a pregnant woman is known as a Cesarean section or C-section. Its original intention was to remove a dead baby from a dying or dead mother. Therefore, Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) was not delivered by Cesarean Section as it was intended at the time, since his mother was still alive when he invaded Britain in 55 BC. The most probable explanation for the term was from the Lex Caesaria law (from the Latin verb caedere, “to cut”) made in 715 BC by the second king of Rome ..read more

Maria Shopova Dublin, Ireland Healing the Heart with Words by Maria Shopova Loss is a universal human experience that spans borders and cultures. Patients, facing death, may struggle with existential questions and anxiety due to the loss of health. Families bear the agony of watching a loved one deteriorate and die, and then enter a period of grieving. And medical professionals, who are not immune to loss, must confront their own powerlessness before death. Coping with loss is a complex process. Patients, loved ones, and healthcare professionals may feel overwhelmed by emotions at times ..read more

Richard de Grijs Sydney, Australia Figure 1. Passengers leaving quarantine. Museums & Galleries NSW. During the Age of Sail, “road,” “workhouse,” “hospital,” “army,” “camp,” “emigrant,” “jail”/“gaol,” and “ship” were routine noun adjuncts pertaining to the deadly fevers frequently occurring in overcrowded spaces in cold weather. Although “fever” diagnoses were common, most such instances in ships’ surgeons’ journals related to typhus or typhoid fevers—until 1869, they were not usually differentiated.1 Edward Coxere (1639–1664), detailing his imprisonment in Portofarino Castle (in present-d ..read more

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Counterclockwise from bottom left: Sigmund Freud, Stanley Hall, Carl Gustav Jung, Sándor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, and Abraham Arden Brill. 1909. Wellcome Collection. “A nation that produced Goethe could not possibly go to the bad.” – Sigmund Freud, 1930 In March 1938, Austria became part of the Greater German Reich. Nazi antisemitism and the exclusion of Jews from society began at once. Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the creator of psychoanalysis, could no longer deny what was happening in his beloved Vienna. Eighty-two years old and dying of intraoral cancer, he ..read more

JMS Pearce Hull, England Robert Remak. Via Wikimedia. This article is based in part on an older publication, Lancet 1996.2 The name of Robert Remak (1815–1865) is linked eponymously to several neurological observations. They include Remak’s band, Remak’s fibers, and Remak’s ganglion.1 His father was a cigar merchant, in a ghetto in the Polish town of Poznan.2 He studied medicine in Berlin; his teachers included Johann Schönlein and Johannes Müller. Remak’s career was forged in the face of adversity because Jews were barred from teaching and most high offices by Prussian law. He failed to secur ..read more