In a 2010 issue of ADF Health I wrote an article More on the Staff and Serpent of Asclepius (1) describing Asclepian medicine and the Asclepian Temples with a short description of the wooden staff and entwining serpent of Asclepius. At the time I had not found any information on the origin, symbolism or nature… Read more »
Dear Editor Recently, while reading Sherwin Nuland’s Doctors: The Biography of Medicine in relation to the impacts on medicine of Rene Laennec’s invention of the stethoscope, Nuland writes about four milestones in a medical student’s education.1 First is the introduction to the cadaver. Second is buying your first stethoscope at the medical society bookshop. Third… Read more »
“If the importance of a disease for mankind is measured by the number of fatalities it causes, then tuberculosis must be considered much more important than those most feared infectious diseases, plague, cholera and the like. One in seven of all human beings dies from tuberculosis.” (Robert Koch, in his address to the Berlin Physiological… Read more »
“A phthitic soldier is to his roommates what a glandered horse is to its stablemates.” (Jean Antoine Villemin, French Army surgeon, 1865) [1] Introduction Tuberculosis is an infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which can occur in any organ of the body but is most well known in the lung. It has been a scourge throughout known… Read more »
Arsenic is a substance that has been well known to both the ‘healer’ and the ‘poisoner’ throughout history. It is ubiquitous in our environment and it is a potent neurological and liver toxin as well as a lung, bladder and skin carcinogen. [1] It was used throughout history as a potent poison to kill off… Read more »
“If I were asked which is the most destructive of all diseases I should unhesitatingly reply, it is that which for some years has been raging with impunity … What contagion does thus invade the whole body, so much resist medical art, becomes inoculated so readily, and so cruelly tortures the patient ?” Desiderius Erasmus,… Read more »
There is a close association between infectious diseases, epidemics and war, and for many reasons. In history, soldiers and sailors have endured many hardships – wounds and death, exhaustion from battles and long marches, shortage of shelter, food and water, and sometimes they brought disease with them from their homeland or from other wars, all… Read more »
Plague is an acute infectious disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis and is still endemic in indigenous rodent populations of South and North America, Africa and Central Asia. In epidemics plague is transmitted to humans by the bite of the Oriental or Indian rat flea and the human flea. The primary hosts of the… Read more »
