The Surgeon Evgueni Vasilievich Pavlov in the Operating Theater, by Ilya Repin, 1888. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Medicine

Volume II, Number 4 | fall 2009

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The Travelling Quack, by Tom Merry, 1889.

Preamble

The God in the Machine

By Lewis H. Lapham

Americans ask of medicine more than medicine can deliver—not only the cure for death, but also the gift of riches.

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Albucasis blistering a patient in the hospital at Cordova, 1100, by Ernest Board, c. 1912.

Early Islamic Medicine

By Jonathan Lyons

The history of Western medicine owes much to its encounters with the medieval Muslim world, yet this debt seems destined to go unrecognized and unrepaid.

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Map

Contagion

A brief history of malaria, leprosy, and smallpox.

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1847 | Philadelphia

Gaining Admission

Elizabeth Blackwell changes the face of medicine.More

c. 1760 | Michigan

White-Man Giver

Native Americans encounter a terrible sickness.More

1610 | Toulouse

Preventative Care

Finding a cure for love.More

Charts & Graphs

Royal Treatment

How heads of state get their medicine.

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English art historian, novelist and journalist Iain Pears.

Portrait of English essayist and critic Thomas De Quincey.

Black and white photograph of Emily Dickinson sitting next to a desk.

Meehan Crist

Persian philosopher and scientist Avicenna.

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

—Robert Burton, 1621

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

Black and white photograph of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud with cigar.

Plato & Sigmund Freud

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