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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Valentine Godé-Darel in a Hospital Bed, by Ferdinand Hodler, 1914.

Course of Illness

By Iain Bamforth

Reconsidering an epic of illness—Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

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Map

Contagion

A brief history of malaria, leprosy, and smallpox.

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2650 BC | China

Yin and Yang

Achieving harmony in nature and the body.More

1526 | Basel

End of the Road

Discussing death with Erasmus.More

1554 | Montpellier

Body Snatchers

Bringing out the dead in medieval France.More

Charts & Graphs

Vital Signs

Inside the modern American hospital.

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Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician Moses Maimonides.

Black and white photograph of scholar, novelist, and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

black and white pencil drawing of Moliere in an ornate frame

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

American novelist and short story writer Bernard Cooper.

Black and white photograph of John Crowley sitting on a porch.

Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860

Plato & Sigmund Freud

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