A Soldier's Hero: Edith Cavell (1865–1915)

Edith Cavell

Several of them are well known: C. W. Hufeland's, 'Begriffund Wesen der Krankheit' (1975); Virchow's, 'Tber die heutige Stellung der Pathologie' (1869); Ribbert's, 'Das Wesen der Krankheiten' (1909); Canguilhem's, 'Essai sur quelques problemes concernant le normal et le pathologique' (1950); Freud's, 'Die Arzt und der Kranke' (1927); Rather's, 'Zur Philosophie des Begriffs "Krankheit"' (1958); ...

Using Stanley Cavell

A necessary hero

How will we know when it’s done? Today’s computational methods can generate reasonable homology models with a minimum of 30% sequence identity within a family. Once a genome is completed and subdivided into families that are 30% identical, it is easy to calculate how many structure determinations are necessary to yield models for that genome. Our accountants, the bioinformaticists, estimate we ...

Ode to Edith

Small viruses, we could not see And so relied on CPE To find them as they multiplied And thus they were identified. But Edith, who pursued the tracks Of polio, and saw its plaques Could tell them from Coxsackie B By Clinical Virology Which sorted out Pandora's Box From paraflu to chickenpox. Now, in this golden age of plastic Progress since has been fantastic Probes and RIA and kits Are quite e...

Hero worship

This month, as the surest route to public embarassment, I decided to write about scientific heroes. Today’s world is full of talk of mentoring. Graduate students are told to find supervisors who will intellectually nourish them, emotionally support them, and teach them networking and grantspersonship. As I tap away, I can almost hear Uncle Syd muttering that the world is going to the dogs. In h...