I just came back from The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal exhibit at NYU’s Grey Gallery. For those who don’t know, Ramon y Cajal (or Cajal as he is commonly referred to) was the father of neuroanatomy. He shared the Nobel Prize with Camillo Golgi in 1906 for using Golgi’s staining method to show that neurons were […]
Well the easy answer is no, not in any significant numbers. But the point of this post is to tell the improbable story of how one premature and very underweight baby did in fact survive. This story is taken from Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by the late midwife Jennifer Worth (née Lee; called Jenny throughout […]
As a longtime fan of Dr Lisa Sanders’ New York Times column on diagnosis, I was excited to listen to Every Patient Tells A Story (Random House Audio, 2009). I happily looked forward to an anthology of favorite cases that she had already presented. However, when I started to listen to the Audible book, read by the author, I quickly realized […]
Emmanuel Carrere said, “To write a book, you’ve got to be persuaded that you’re the only person who could write it.” A corollary to that is that the book that you are writing does not exist already because you are not only the only person alive but the only person for all time. A tall order that is slightly mitigated […]
Over the holidays, I took two of my students out for lunch. We actually left campus and ended up at a small, packed-to-the-gills-deli where we sat at long tables with the other refugees from the lunch joints with larger seating capacities and individual tables that were closed for the holidays. Hyde Park is within the city of Chicago but has […]
Recently I was asked to answer a “Proust Questionnaire” for a get-to-know-your-teacher blurb. I had never heard the term but the exemplary questions, (e.g. Your favorite virtue; If not yourself, who would you be?; For what fault have you most toleration?; Favorite heroines in fiction) were clear enough that I was able to get into the spirit. I wrote back my […]
The idea of regeneration and de novo cell production captures the interest of many in the public. I am not entirely clear on the reasons that people find regeneration so alluring. But I venture to say that regeneration may be an attractive idea because it offers 1) the hope of reversing ill health and 2) a biological approach to immortality, typically the exclusive domain of […]
When I first heard the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, I was instantly captivated. An accomplished and cosmopolitan editor of a French fashion magazine struck down by a pontine stroke blinks out a memoir which is published only 2 days before his death. I was struck by the dichotomy of Bauby’s profound loss accompanied in the most unlikely fashion by unparalleled […]
I just finished reading an astounding book, The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help? by Bibb Latané and John M Darley (Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1970). Latané and Darley set out to understand what makes the modern bystander so apparently apathetic and callous, watching but not helping as others are hurt, maimed and even die. They ask whether urbanization has created such […]
I recently visited the fabulous country of Japan (more on that in a future post). On the plane to Tokyo, I read Susannah Cahalan’s book on her transient craziness, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. It’s a long flight to Tokyo and the book is highly engaging. As it turned out, with my reading speed (fairly slow), first to […]
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The brain is sooooo cool! 