Brilliant Doctor Research Articles

Dans sa chair by Yasmine Chami

Reviewed by: Dans sa chair by Yasmine Chami Jane E. Evans Chami, Yasmine. Dans sa chair. Actes Sud, 2022. ISBN 978-2-330-16124-8. Pp. 192. Books about female protagonists grieving the end of a relationship or marriage abound, with the main character detailing her progress from heartbreak to a healthier condition. However, in Yasmine Chami’s evocative fourth novel, male protagonist Ismaïl attempts to make sense of his role in his significant life changes from the past two years, “deux années chaotiques” (14), including the end of an extramarital affair with Meriem, a younger colleague; the demise of his thirty-year marriage to Médée, whom he still loves; his estrangement from his grown children and his siblings; and his leave from his career as a renowned brain surgeon and medical school professor. Ismaïl focuses on three areas of his life, namely, his childhood and the loss of his father; his early years as a married man and a driven medical specialist; and his present existence as a maladjusted, solitary sixty-year-old. For each period, the protagonist recalls a “truth” from that time and re-evaluates it. He sees his childhood as the moment in which his father was inexplicably imprisoned and then died, leaving him, at age ten, as “responsable de tous” (52). His desire to make his mother and family proud of him accompanies this huge loss. Ismaïl next considers his life as a young surgeon, supported by his wife, Médée, and their three children. He realizes that he had misunderstood his ex-wife’s sculpted figurines, which he had dismissed as a mere hobby. Instead, she turned exhibiting and selling her creations into a lucrative business that sustains her after their divorce. Moreover, he concedes that her “étonnante résilience” (127) was exemplary: she graciously shouldered the planning of all birthdays and holidays with family, occasions that he regularly missed, without complaint. In praising Médée’s versatility, Ismaïl confesses that he lacks this quality: “la réalité que son épouse lui avait longtemps épargnée, œuvrant afin de le maintenir au centre d’une vie familiale chaleureuse et unie qu’elle avait pour la plus grande partie assumée seule” (110). Ismail’s realization of his ex-wife’s steadfastness helps him understand why his adult son and daughter sided with their mother upon learning of their father’s adultery. As the protagonist gains a new understanding of his former wife as well as of his grown children, he also revisits his early promises to his mother, not only to become a brilliant doctor, but also to provide the best medical care for Jawad, his autistic younger brother. Ismaïl again recognizes his shortcomings because Jawad never received any treatment for his autism. The protagonist provided minimal support through monthly checks that he sent to his sisters for their brother’s wellbeing. Thus, through the protagonist’s reassessment of his behavior from childhood on, Dans sa chair reveals his inexperience in functioning autonomously in the world. At each turn, as Ismaïl accepts another painful truth about himself, his quest for the meaning in his life ultimately eludes him. [End Page 210] Jane E. Evans University of Texas, El Paso Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Robert J. Levine: a distinguished problem solver


 Robert Levine: a man capable of intelligent and constructive criticism, who could accept with humility the criticisms of others. A man who left a deep mark in the history of research, both inside and outside the United States. Above all, a great problem solver.
 A brilliant doctor and refined bioethicist, he was able to deal with the disasters of research on human subjects and to remedy to them. He fought against the application in clinical practice of ethical principles valid only for research, but also against the universalisation of the rules of informed consent, which are applicable only to Western cultures. A researcher who deserves to be known by all, especially by young people.

Poe's “Eureka,” Erasmus Darwin, and Discourses of Radical Science in Britain and America, 1770–1850

Poe's “Eureka,” Erasmus Darwin, and Discourses of Radical Science in Britain and America, 1770–1850

Gerard van Swieten, the Dutch personal physician of Empress Maria Theresia (1700-1780).

Born as orthodox catholic in 1700 in Leyden, Gerard van Swieten was orphaned as a child in 1712. He studied medicine under Herman Boerhaave in Leyden from 1720, recording the lectures of his mentor and publishing them after his death. Following his graduation in 1715, van Swieten practiced medicine and pharmacy in Leyden, giving private lectures to students in both fields. Van Swieten became known as a brilliant doctor, and it was expected that he might succeed to Boerhaave's position after his death in 1738; however, his catholic faith was an obstacle for the protestant State University. These very beliefs, however, contributed to his instatement as the personal physician of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia (1717-1780) in October 1744. In the summer of 1745 he was appointed physician to Maria Theresa in Vienna by Franz I. and at the same time appointed prefect of the court library. In addition to taking care of the library, other tasks he received from Maria Theresia included reformation of the medical faculty, improving the quality of Vienna's clinics and promoting healthcare in the empire. Van Swieten is seen as one of the founders of the so-called First Wiener Medical School (Erste Wiener Medizinische Schule) in 1745, and was at the founding of the first modern clinic in 1754. Van Swieten died June18, 1772.

‘Modern Medicine had to Start Somewhere

174 Health & History, 2016. 18/1 Museums and Media ‘Modern Medicine had to Start Somewhere’ Peter Adams The Knick (Series 1 and 2). Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 2014–15. HBO Cinemax Running Time Season 1: 487 minutes (available on DVD and Blu-Ray). Rated R – Realistically simulated surgical procedures and drug use. Running Time Season 2: 564 minutes (available on DVD from 8 June 2016). Rated MA. Set in New York in 1900, The Knick is the abbreviated name of The Knickerbocker Hospital, the main setting for this period medical drama from Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh. The series deals with a number of contemporary issues treated in a historical context: how knowledge disseminates between surgeons, the god-like status afforded to some physicians, the competitive nature of medical research, pseudoscience creeping into medical practice, and the marketing of pharmaceuticals. It also gives us a peek into practices of the past: historical medical instruments, different treatments, racial segregation of medical care, the source of cadavers used for medical research, and the risks associated with the formative use of electricity in operations. With a desire to be historically accurate where possible, the program’s writers consulted American ophthalmologist Dr Stanley Burns, owner of the world’s largest private collection of early medical photographs that form part of the Burns Archives. This intent to be historically accurate is not always met, and so it would be best to describe The Knick as a pastiche of fact and fiction. The central character of Dr John Thackeray, the hospital’s head surgeon, is fiction drawn from reality. Played by British actor Clive Owen, Thackeray is a brilliant doctor and scientist, with a driving ambition to improve surgical techniques to save lives. While his quest is honourable, the viewer learns as early as episode one that he is also a flawed figure with an addiction to cocaine. Thackeray is inspired by Dr William Halsted,1 the American surgeon who practiced medicine 1 In an interview with Cinemax, actor Clive Owen said that the writers had told him that Thackeray was based upon Dr William Halsted. Cinemax, “Season 2: Q&A with Clive Owen” http://www.cinemax.com/the-knick/season-2-q-and-a-with-clive-owen.html (accessed 17 May 2016), n.d. Health & History ● 18/1 ● 2016 175 Image 1. The Knick Season 2 Box Set. Image courtesy of Roadshow Entertainment. Image 2. The Knick Operating Theatre. Image courtesy of Roadshow Entertainment. 176 MUSEUMS AND MEDIA from the late 1870s to the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, and one of four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Like Thackeray, Halsted was addicted to cocaine, although Halsted became addicted in the 1880s and cured his addiction by replacing cocaine with morphine. The Knick’s African American surgeon, Dr Algernon Edwards, is another fictional character who is possibly an amalgam of two notable doctors—Daniel Hale Williams,2 and Louis T. Wright.3 Williams set up Chicago’s first non-segregated hospital and was the first African American to be admitted to the American College of Surgeons. Wright, a Harvard graduate, was the first African American doctor to work as a surgeon in a non-segregated hospital, at Harlem Hospital in New York City. Another example of altering facts to suit the fictional world of the television program is The Knickerbocker Hospital itself. This hospital existed in Harlem New York City, and served the community from 1862–1979. It had several name changes before finally settling on The Knickerbocker in 1913, a name it kept until a few years before its closure. Like its television counterpart, it had a policy of refusing to treat African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century. Casting the African American surgeon Dr Edwards as a main character in a hospital that doesn’t treat African American patients appears to be employed for dramatic effect, as there is no evidence that this took place as early as 1900. However, elements of the show are historically accurate and well chosen for their dramatic interest. For example, in the final episode of season one, a character with a mental illness has all her teeth extracted by physician Dr Henry Cotton...

Prof. Ioan Jianu: founding member of SICOT.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Romania witnessed the rise of some brilliant doctors. One of them was Prof. Ioan Jianu, also known in the scientific world as Jean Jiano, whose career was dedicated to medicine and training young generations of doctors. He was one of the founding members of SICOT, at the first meeting held in 1929 at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris, representing Romania. He was a main figure in Romanian surgery, pioneering in the fields of traumatology, reconstructive and plastic surgery and also showing interest in replantation surgery. He also founded the first laboratory of experimental surgery in Romania and two professional associations.

L'affaire Annette Zelman ou les conséquences dramatiques de l'antisémitisme ordinaire

This article examines the emblematic yet unexceptional case of denunciations motivated by intimate and familial reasons, as well as their effects in memories. In occupied Paris, Annette Zelman and Jean Jausion loved each other and had planned on getting married, yet the young man’s father, Hubert Jausion, a brilliant doctor, could not tolerate this idea: he denounced Annette Zelman to the Gestapo in the spring of 1942. This led to dramatic consequences for Annette, who was arrested and deported, and for her fiance, who, driven to despair by her disappearance and his father’s responsibility in this affair, committed suicide in 1945. After the war, the affair seemed to have been forgotten: the Zelman family did not suspect anything; Doctor Jausion, probably remorseful, showed empathy towards his Jewish collaborators and thus benefited from an untarnished reputation. Nonetheless, certain people knew what he had done, yet observed a tacit omerta. Such silence helps without doubt understand why the majority of analogous cases have been ignored.

Oliver St. John Gogarty: surgeon, poet and author

For its size and population, Ireland has produced more than its statistical share of brilliant doctors. One has only to consider, for example, the eponyms which have come from that island. These include Grave's disease, Colles' fracture, Stokes–Adams attacks, Corrigan's pulse and Freyer's prostatectomy. As well as great clinicians, Ireland has given us many doctors who have found fame outside medical practice – Bethel Solomons, obstetrician and a distinguished Master of the Rotunda, but also the first Jewish mayor of Dublin, and Sir William Wilde (father of Oscar), a distinguished aural surgeon, but better known as a prominent archaeologist of Ireland.

“Rambowitz” versus the “Schlemiel” in Leon Uris' Exodus

The reprinted edition of Exodus, which appeared in 1969 (the novel first published in 1958), opens with a striking declaration from its author, Leon Uris. Pondering why the book met with universal success, Uris proclaims that it tells event unparalleled in the history of mankind...the Jews coming back after centuries of abuse, indignities, torture and murder to carve an oasis in the sand with and blood (Uric preface). Such a sentiment, of course, expresses the traditional heroic Zionist narrative of Israel's founding, recognizable to most Jews from countless rabbis' sermons, fundraising appeals by Jewish organizations, pontifications by one's relatives at Passover Seders. But the next passage is much more peculiar, though no less strident: All the cliche Jewish characters who have cluttered our fiction-the clever businessman, the doctor, the lawyer, the sulking artist...all those good folks who spend their chapters hating themselves [and] the world...all those steeped in pity...all those riders of the psychoanalysis couch...all these have been left where they rightfully belong, on the room floor (preface). The preface concludes: is about people, people who do not apologize for being born Jews or the right to live in human dignity. Their story a revelation to me as I discovered it in the farms and cities of Israel. And...it has been a revelation to...readers, Jewish and Gentile, alike (preface). Never mind that Uris has mixed his metaphors here, starting off by lambasting American fiction but ending with an image, cutting room floor, clearly taken from the movies. (The slip may further confirm the suspicion raised by Joel Blocker, reviewing the novel in Commentary, that Exodus was written with one eye on the movies [Blocker]). Never mind, either, the astounding breadth of this condemnation; one can understand Uris disliking authors who stereotype Jewish characters as sneaky lawyers, but why, for God's sake, does he object to Jews portrayed as brilliant doctors? The passage is typical of Uris' writing in that it blends simplistic thinking and stylistic ineptitude with a certain crude but undeniable power; golden riders of the psychoanalysis couch, for instance, is admittedly a memorable phrase. What concerns me most in this essay, however, is Uris' championing of Jews as a fighting people-proudly claiming what they deem rightfully theirs, Palestine, with guts and blood. In Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of Jewry ( 1990), Paul Breines has distilled this warlike conception into an archetypal figure whom he pithily labels Rambowitz. In his preface and in Exodus itself, Uris juxtaposes Rambowitz-like characters with their polar opposite, a kind of Jew he sees as vilely clutter[ing] up Jewish-American fiction, a type characterized, significantly, by a wealth of wonderfully onomatopoetic Yiddish words (each with its own subtly distinctive meaning, and many of which have entered the English language): nebbish, klutz, yold, shlimazl, shmo, shlepper, shlump, shmuck, shmegegge, shmendrick. Here, I'll be referring to this figure, a kind of anti-Rambowitz, with perhaps the best-known term from this linguistic group: schlemiel. Traditionally, of course, the schlemiel is everything Rambowitz is not: weak, cowardly, bumbling, hyper-intellectual, sexually dysfunctional, feminized, hypochondriacal, paralyzed by neurotic self consciousness. Clearly, Leon Uris is not only a writer who lionizes tough Jews, but one who considers himself a tough Jew as well. This speculation is confirmed by Uris' reply to Yehiel Aranowicz, former captain of the Exodus, the actual ship filled with Jewish Holocaust survivors that after the war ran the British blockade and docked in Palestine-the pivotal story in Uris' novel, as its title implies. Quoted in Time Magazine, Aranowicz dismissed Uris' book as neither history nor literature. …

Russell Baker to Michael Halberstam

96 LETTERS Eskimo and Indian days) participated in a good deal of semi-primitive medicine. I like the idea of being occasionally controversial or opinionated, in columns specifically labeled as opinion. I think that what will make the column different from other ones is the fact that I occassionally shoot off my mouth—after all, almost anyone can look up the latest treatment for athlete's foot and write a rather solemn column about it. If you need any additional biographical material, please let me know. I do think, by the way, that the little identifying slug that goes with the column should read something like, "Michael Halberstam, a practicing internist, is also . . ." Yours truly, Michael J. Halberstam, M.D. MJH:mpi:bjc Russeli Baker to Michael Halberstam November 28, 1977 Dear Michael, Mimi and I both read your novel over the weekend and enjoyed it, both. I have sent some incoherent blurb material to Kinney, which of course makes no attempt to do a fine critique. Nor will I try that here. The first thing to be noted is that the book reads damn fast. We both sailed right through it. This as you know is good. Second, Levine is just a very good strong character of the sort political fiction is usually very weak on. This should be a big plus in promoting a movie sale. I trust and hope you have a first-rate agent, or lawyer, as Lippincott in my experience is woefully unaggressive in the commercial arts, and it seems to me you have very good spin-off possibilities from this one. On the captious side: I am a bit confused about your dates. The New Hampshire primary, e.g., is always held in March, deep winter up there. The only thing that gives it any importance is its earliness. Held two weeks later, it would barely make the papers. You have it dated well up in April, as I recall. A small point, to be sure, but one that will make nitpickers say Halberstam doesn't know the first fucking thing about politics. I find the timing odd in other places, particularly at the end when Letters 97 we are in September and the party doesn't seem yet to have chosen between Levine and his opponent for the nomination. Captious Point Two: The opening pages describing America in 1988 are extremely interesting, but they make me feel that some kind of black comedy is about to be unfolded, and of course the story turns out to be something else altogether. I don't know that this is bad. You had me interested from the start. But it was a somewhat jarring switch to expectations when you shift gears and begin showing us Levine in human depth. I think the crux of the matter may be in the abrupt way you dispose of the Inevitable Candidate—the news that he has gone haywire with guns comes and goes like an episode of Joseph Heller. On the negative critical side, I must say that I think it a dreadful loss to the society that yet another doctor appears determined to spend himself on the typewriter. The country has far more books than it needs, and far fewer doctors, yet you sawbones all appear intent on widening the gap even further. An apparently capable doctor has just given us "Coma." At Yale the brilliant Doctor Seltzer fritters good clinical time away over the typewritter. Michael Crichton, if I'm not mistaken, is also a doctor, yet how little time he must have for sawing at gall bladders and palpating the trunk as he toils at his fiction. Surgeon Nolen writes when he should be groping in abdominal cavities. Over in Baltimore Edgar Berman is clacking out funny assaults on his profession and Betty Friedan, disdaining the scalpel forevermore, so far as I can make out. I ask you, Michael, do I abandon my typewriter and go about the office prescribing long vacations, less alcohol and an end to cigarettes for the coronary candidates who run my paper? Does your brother David administer poultices at Bellevue? Even Normal Mailer—God save the mark!—has refused to leave...

TEXTILE DERMATITIS IN MEN

BEFORE commencing my subject, I should like to state how much I appreciate the honor of being asked to address the dermatologic section of the American Medical Association, and to express my warmest thanks to the President and the office bearers not only for their kindness in asking me, but for the generous reception which has been granted me. The Greeks, as usual, had a word for it—It is not given to every man to go to Athens—but I, a citizen of Edinburgh, sometimes called the modern Athens, believe that the United States is the lodestar of every medical man who wishes to advance his knowledge at the feet of brilliant doctors and at the most efficient clinics. By textile dermatitis I mean dermatitis caused by textiles, whether dyed or undyed; I have excluded other articles of wearing apparel, such as shoes, hatbands and nickel accessories. It is not from