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

1889 | London

Collecting Symptoms

Jerome K. Jerome gives a self-diagnosis.More

c. 1870 | South Africa

Herbal Remedy

The power of Zulu medicinal plants.More

Charts & Graphs

Forever Young

Preservation methods for the dead.

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Black and white photograph of Alsatian-German winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Albert Schweitzer.

Black and white photograph of English writer Virginia Woolf.

Black and white photograph of British writer Doris Lessing.

Depiction of German abbess and mystic St. Hildegard.

Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

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

Plato & Sigmund Freud

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