Nurses in Khaki, and how it all began
We usually visualize nurses to be in a white attire, but more recently the colors are often blue, green or mauve. On the other hand Khaki (a brownish yellow color)…
Dr TM Nair: A doctor politician in Madras Presidency
Many doctors may have come across a Monthly Medical Journal "The Antiseptic". This Journal - A monthly publication of medicine and Surgery, was established in the year 1904, in Madras…
Bassini led the way for a perfect hernia repair
Bassini and his injury Edoardo Bassini was an Italian surgeon, and as the fate would have it he devoted his life for a perfect hernia repair. Born in 1844, he…
Golgi and Cajal: Two adversaries who shared a Nobel Prize
The prize It was 1906, and the Nobel committee declared that that years Prize for medicine was to be given for visualization of Neurons. It was to be shared by…
Finsen’s Nobel Prize for letting light to heal
Finsen's chemical light to heal Niels Finsen was born in 1860 in Faroe Islands, a remote Danish territory located in the North Atlantic between Iceland and Norway. He lived on…
Christiaan Barnard, and his heart transplants
Christiaan Barnard was made famous on 3rd December 1967, when he performed first human to human heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. He was just 45 when he performed…
Virginia Apgar, an accidental anesthetist
All medical students are taught Apgar score, a 10-point scale to grade a just-born as healthy or at risk. This has made Virginia Apgar quite immortal. She however was neither…
William Osler and origin of residency in medical training
Medical training is long. Across the globe, students enter the medical school for an initial generic training. When medical students complete this initial 4-5 years of training, they become doctors.…
McDowell performs first successful abdominal surgery: accolades and brickbats
In December of 1809, Ephraim McDowell performed an abdominal surgery, and successfully removed a large ovarian tumor. This was many decades before Anesthesia was invented, and at a time when…
Malpighi and beyond: Italian legacy with a microscope
Malpighi and discovery of capillaries Marcello Malpighi, was born in Italy in the year 1628. It was the same year, when an English Physician William Harvey had discovered circulation of…