First Look at the Burns Collection of Early Medical Photographs

CBS News has posted a gripping set of images, mostly of cancer patients, dating to the 1880s. The photos from the Burns Archive are graphic, as much as they’re telling, instructive and rare.   This photograph, taken in New York City in 1886, is one of the earliest ever taken of breast surgery. Surgeons had […]

Posted in Communication, Medical History, Oncology (cancer), PhotographyTagged , , , , , 2 Comments on First Look at the Burns Collection of Early Medical Photographs

A Play About the Life and Work of Dr. Rosalind Franklin

Franklin’s story starts like this: She was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in London. She excelled in math and science. She studied physical chemistry at Cambridge, where she received her undergraduate degree in 1941. After performing research in photochemistry in the following year on scholarship, she joined the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) and carried out basic investigations on the micro-structure of coal and carbon compounds, and so earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. She was a polyglot, and next found herself in Paris at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimique de l’Etat, where she picked up some fine skills in x-ray crystallography.

You get the picture: she was smart, well-educated and totally immersed in physical chemistry before, during and after WWII. Single-minded and focused, you might say –

Posted in Essential Lessons, Medical History, Occupational health, Reviews, Science, Theater, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on A Play About the Life and Work of Dr. Rosalind Franklin

Notes on Cholera, Old and New

Dr. John Snow, an anesthesiologist and founder of public health, recognized the mode of cholera’s spread more than 150 years ago in London, where he became famous for mandating the closure of the Broad Street Pump. Snow died at the age of 45, of what was said to be apoplexy, old jargon for a stroke.

In 2009, there were 221,226 cholera cases reported and 4,946 cholera deaths in 45 countries, according to the CDC. Based on information put together by the World Health Organization,

Posted in Infectious Disease, Medical NewsTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment on Notes on Cholera, Old and New
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