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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1624 | London

Riddling Distemper

John Donne meditates on man’s miserable condition.More

1610 | Toulouse

Preventative Care

Finding a cure for love.More

1747 | London

Cure-All

John Wesley throws some cold water on, well, everything.More

Charts & Graphs

What Seems to Be the Problem?

Medical human oddities.

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Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.

Surgeon and author Richard Selzer.

English novelist, essayist, and critic George Orwell.

Persian philosopher and scientist Avicenna.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

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

American writer William Styron.

Emily Dickinson & William Styron

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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