Did Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky suffer from mesial temporal lobe epilepsy?
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Many scientific authors--among them famous names such as Henri Gastaut or Sigmund Freud--dealt with the question from what kind of epilepsy Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky (1821-1881) might had suffered. Because of the tight interplay between Dostoevsky's literary work and his own disease we throw light on the author's epilepsy against the background of his epileptic fictional characters. Moreover, we attempt to classify Dostoevsky's epilepsy on the basis of his bibliography, language, and literary work. (+info)
Oskar Kokoschka and Auguste Forel: life imitating art or a stroke of genius?
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In the spring of 1910, Oskar Kokoschka painted a portrait of the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, neuroanatomist, temperance champion, and myrmecologist Auguste Forel. The painting is a remarkable psychological portrait but also appears to predict the strokes and right hemiparesis that affected Forel more than a year later. Although it is possible that Kokoschka shared a gift of psychic prediction with his mother and grandmother, a more likely explanation can be ascribed to a combination of the artist's acute perception and the presence of subclinical signs of stroke disease. (+info)
William Sealy Gosset and William A. Silverman: two "students" of science.
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In 1908, William Sealy Gosset, a chemist in an Irish brewery, published his second article on statistics in Biometrika under the pseudonym "Student." He chose this pseudonym because his company did not allow its scientists to publish confidential data. In the article, Gosset described a procedure to assess population means by using small samples. This was the origin of the "Student's t test." Dr William Silverman (1917-2004), a pioneer neonatologist, also used the pseudonym "Student." He sent thousands of notes, clippings, anecdotes, and quotations to Pediatrics with the signature line "Submitted by Student" that appeared as blurbs at the ends of articles since 1977. Both Gosset and Silverman were rigorous students of science. Silverman chose pseudonyms to seek readers' responses to the message rather than the messenger. He also wished that one would remain a perpetual student, ready to say "I don't know," and strive to understand the human side of medicine. This brief article provides a perspective on these 2 "students" of science. (+info)
Age-related functional recruitment for famous name recognition: an event-related fMRI study.
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Recent neuroimaging research shows that older adults exhibit recruitment, or increased activation on various cognitive tasks. The current study evaluated whether a similar pattern also occurs in semantic memory by evaluating age-related differences during recognition of Recent (since the 1990s) and Enduring (1950s to present) famous names. Fifteen healthy older and 15 healthy younger adults performed the name recognition task with a high and comparable degree of accuracy, although older adults had slower reaction time in response to Recent famous names. Event-related functional MRI showed extensive networks of activation in the two groups including posterior cingulate, right hippocampus, temporal lobe and left prefrontal regions. The Recent condition produced more extensive activation than the Enduring condition. Older adults had more extensive and greater magnitude of activation in 15 of 20 regions, particularly for the Recent condition (15 of 15; 7 of 15 also differed for Enduring); young adults did not show greater activation magnitude in any region. There were no group differences for non-famous names, indicating that age differences are task-specific. The results support and extend the existing literature to semantic memory tasks, indicating that older adult brains use functional recruitment to support task performance, even when task performance accuracy is high. (+info)
Tuberculosis, bronchiectasis, and infertility: what ailed George Orwell?
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In the last and most productive years of his life, George Orwell struggled with pulmonary tuberculosis, dying at the dawn of the era of chemotherapy. His case history illustrates clinical aspects of tuberculosis with contemporary relevance: the role of poverty in its spread, the limited efficacy of monotherapy, the potential toxicity of treatment, and the prominence of cachexia as a terminal symptom. Orwell's ordeals with collapse therapy may have influenced the portrayal of the tortures of Winston Smith in the novel 1984. I discuss unifying diagnoses for Orwell's respiratory problems and apparent infertility, including tuberculous epididymitis, Young syndrome, immotile cilia syndrome, and cystic fibrosis. (+info)
Did Adolf Hitler have syphilis?
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The evidence that Adolf Hitler might have suffered from incapacitating syphilis is reviewed. Rumors that he acquired syphilis from a prostitute at the age of 20 years, with possible re-infection during World War I, can no longer be verified. Evidence is that he was sexually rather inactive throughout his life. Suggestions that Hitler's cardiac lesion and complaints such as transitory blindness, tremor of his left arm and leg, recurring abdominal pain and a skin lesion of the leg were of syphilitic aetiology cannot be supported. Hitler's progressive mental and physical deterioration after 1942, his growing paranoia, fits of rage, grandiosity and symptoms of possible dementia would fit in neurosyphilis. There are, however, also other explanations for his terminal syndrome, and evidence that repeated clinical examinations did not show the characteristic signs of dementia paralytica or tabes dorsalis, swings the balance of probability away from tertiary syphilis. (+info)
Aristotle (384-322 BC): philosopher and scientist of ancient Greece.
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Aristotle's studies encompassed the entire world of living things. Many of his descriptions and classifications remain sound today. Although not a physician, he exerted a profound influence on medicine for the next 2000 years. (+info)
Dostoevsky and Stendhal's syndrome.
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Stendhal's syndrome occurs among travelers when they encounter a work of art of great beauty. It is characterized by an altered perception of reality, emotional disturbances, and crises of panic and anxiety with somatization. The patient profile described originally for this syndrome was of particularly sensitive individuals who were admirers of works or art: artists, poets, writers and art students, among others. The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy and there is evidence that he presented the symptoms of Stendahl's syndrome while contemplating some works of art, particularly when viewing Hans Holbein's masterpiece, Dead Christ, during a visit to the museum in Basle. (+info)