Journal of Medical Biography最新文献

John Lizars' (1792-1860) 'A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body' is widely recognized as one of the finest British anatomical atlases published in the nineteenth century. Lizars' commentators always praise his illustrations for their artistry and accuracy, but no one ever provides an account of why they are artistically significant or what makes them veracious. The principal aim of this paper is to begin a discussion of both of those subjects and to show how Lizars used the resources of the visual arts as analytical tools to extend his audience's understanding of the human body.

Sir William Osler, physician in Montreal, in Pennsylvania, at Johns Hopkins and in England, promoted clinical medicine and its interpretation through clinical and pathological observation. He was a keen bibliophile and medical historian. He taught at the bedside and wrote a textbook that was a standard work in his time and for several decades after he died. As a generalist he practised the emerging speciality of neurology and knew many of the early clinicians in that field. The neurology of his time and his contributions to the subject are explored here.

George Francis 'Frank' McLardy (1915-1981) was a pharmacist who lived in Formby in the 1930s. He came from an unremarkable lower middle-class family and enjoyed considerable success at school and later at technical college and pharmacy school. He became a qualified pharmacist just before the war broke. He volunteered for the army and was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force. In France, he witnessed the collapse of the allied forces and was quickly captured. He spent the rest of the war in Poland and in Germany. This was the fate of many young men during the war. What makes McLardy's case unique is that, prior to the war, had a very active role in the Liverpool district of the British Union of Fascists and, while a prisoner of war (POW) he offered to work for the Germans against the Russians and visited POW camps recruiting British men for a unit which aimed to go to the eastern front and fight in German uniforms. Moreover, he did all this while still actively using his qualification as a pharmacist.

The lawyer and physician Paolo Zacchia (1584-1659) was the chief physician at the Vatican and an important advisor to the papal court. He is considered a founder of the field of forensic pathology, and the influence of his masterwork, Quaestiones medico-legales, spread throughout Europe. In this essay, we focus on one of Zacchia's consultations, first published posthumously in 1661. Emerging from a cause for beatification, the case features the intriguing medical notion of one disease curing another. Zacchia was to determine if a young man's recovery from epilepsy was miraculous or not. We will briefly review Zacchia's career, examine his argument and the sources on which he based his reasoning in this case, trace the status of the disease-versus-disease notion to the present, and demonstrate that this consultation represents a rare, if not the only example of syphilis being the curative agent - rather than the disease cured.

Dr Nuri Fehmi Ayberk is an influential figure in the Turkish ophthalmology in training new specialists in the field and contributing to the fight against trachoma. This article includes his short biography, studies, information and cover pictures of some of his works from the original archive of Ege University Faculty of Medicine, Department of History of Medicine and Ethics, Fatma-Ömer Ekimci Library. He took an active role in the establishment of the Turkish Ophthalmological Association in our country (1928) and served as a founding member. Conducting such studies on the biographies and rare books subgroup of the history of medicine is an important contribution to ensure that the biographies of physicians who have left their mark in the past and have achieved success in different specialties are narrated, remembered, and the information and cover pictures of their works in different archives meet with the reader.

Hideo Fukumi (1914-1998) is renowned for his position as the director of Japan's National Institute of Health and his scientific contributions to the fields of bacteriology, virology and epidemiology. This article introduces Fukumi's career cultivated over decades in the Japanese national medical system and focuses on his research on Shigella, Salmonella and influenza. Yet any assessment of his career also has to take into account the considerable controversy and scandal it engendered. This necessary reassessment situates Fukumi's contribution within what has been revealed of Japan's biological weapons programme which reached its zenith during the Second World War. Very few scientists, including Fukumi, were prosecuted for their roles in this programme. Contrarily, they became core personnel in post-war medical research due to the patronage of the United States-Japan alliance in the context of the Cold War. Controversies that later surfaced over Fukumi's role in influenza immunisation campaigns reflect two currents of debate: A belated reckoning with Japan's use of biological weapons and the way this was 'normalised' and overlooked in the post-war period. The role of Japanese scholars and citizens' movements who have interrogated Japanese war crimes and the U.S. cover-ups and made a demand for greater ethical transparency in medical science.

William Butler (1535-1618) was a man without a medical degree who was styled as the 'greatest physician of his age'. He was famous in his lifetime, and in the latter stages of his career was involved with the royal court, attending to King James I and his son, Prince Henry. Butler was an empiricist who practiced confidently and compassionately in a time of limited medical understanding. He was also a man of contradictions: he was loved and respected by his contemporaries but could be cantankerous and obtuse; he was anti-establishment, complaining bitterly about the restrictive monopolisation of medicine sustained by the Royal College of Physicians, but advanced his career via connections within the aristocracy; he sometimes practiced orthodox Galenic medicine, but was at times highly unconventional in his treatments. Posthumously, despite some compelling historical studies of Butler, there has been a great deal of embellishment of his behaviour and practice. This biography draws from Butler's own letters, contemporary writers and modern scholarly literature. It aims to arrange these sources into a verifiable narrative of this singular physician's life.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1805-1847) is widely regarded as one of the musical geniuses of the Romantic period. A prodigy akin to Mozart, Mendelssohn composed piano works, symphonies, and concertos at an early age but died young, at 38. His death has been attributed to neurological disease, but the mystery of his diagnosis is amplified by the fact that his sisters died under similar circumstances, including the renowned composer, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Mendelssohn died after years of suffering from headaches, earaches, and mood disturbances. In the final year of his life, his acute decline was marked by stepwise, progressive neurologic deficits: gait disturbance, loss of sensation in the hands, partial paralysis, and, finally, loss of consciousness. The similar pattern of disease within his family suggests an underlying genetic link, though this may be multifactorial in nature. We present a thorough, posthumous differential diagnosis for Mendelssohn's illness, given his medical history, the familial pattern, and hints from within his music. Possible diagnoses include ruptured cerebral aneurysm with resultant subarachnoid hemorrhage, familial cerebral cavernous malformation, and cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL). Continued research into Mendelssohn's life may yield more information about his illness, death, and possibly true diagnosis.