BACKGROUND Adolf Kussmaul was born in Graben, close to Karlsruhe, Germany, on February 22,1822. He graduated at Heidelberg University in 1845 and he received his medical degree in 1855. He made original descriptions, such as the ophthalmoscope, the gastroscope or endoscope, and Kussmaul signs, besides the respiration named after him. He was the first to perform a thoracocenteses, peritoneal and...

line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and un-stitching has been naught, " wrote William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) about the creative process (1). For sheer spontaneity , evocativeness, and impeccable draftsmanship, he might have been describing the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The artist's speed at work astonished his friends. Having re...

Correspondence to: Professor P M Dunn. Edward Jenner was born on 17 May 1749, the eighth child of the Reverend Stephen Jenner, vicar of Berkeley in the county of Gloucestershire. Both his parents died when he was 5 and he was then looked after by his eldest brother. Educated at Wotton-underEdge and Cirencester, at the age of 13 he was apprenticed for seven years to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon of S...

I was born in 1927. That was the year Charles Lindbergh flew to Paris and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. These high points remain vivid in my memory. Later, however, I became aware of two other happenings that plunged hundreds of my human brothers and sisters into a terrible dark and dismal slough of despondance. In 1927, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In it he called for the cleansing of ...

Rarely have donor conceived offspring been studied. Recently, it has become more common for parents to disclose the nature of conception to their offspring. This new development raises questions about the donor's place in the offspring's life and identity. Using surveys collected by the Donor Sibling Registry, the largest U.S. web-based registry, during a 15 week period from October 2009 to Jan...

In the 100 years since the death of George Huntington in 1916, the disorder he described as a ‘medical curiosity’ has become a focus of intense medical and scientific interest, in part because of the contribution of families in generating knowledge about this family disease. As many writers have noted, George Huntington’s own family played a crucial role in defining this illness (Harper, 2002)....

In the 100 years since the death of George Huntington in 1916, the disorder he described as a ‘medical curiosity’ has become a focus of intense medical and scientific interest, in part because of the contribution of families in generating knowledge about this family disease. As many writers have noted, George Huntington’s own family played a crucial role in defining this illness (Harper, 2002)....

Abstract In the early 1930’s, Fermi wrote two papers in which he introduced concepts of “scattering length” and “pseudopotential.” Since that time, these terms have become universally associated with low energy scattering phenomena. Even though are very different—one atomic physics, other neutron physics—a simple figure underlies both. The appears many times Fermi’s work. We review how came abo...

Khaqani is one of the most important poets in Persian literature. His artistic personality is a complex character; he has worked on various branches of art and elegy is one of the main of these branches. Khaqani has composed over sixty elegies that are considered his masterpieces. His personal elegies are the most famous and the most artistically composed Persian elegies. Seven of these elegies...

When John Down was 18 years old, he had some kind of mystical experience. He met a girl that appeared so peculiar, that he felt sorry for her and, consciously or unconsciously, would spend his whole life searching for this phenomenon. He decided to study Medicine, became the director of the largest “Asylum for Idiots” in England and wrote articles and books about the thing that fascinated him s...