The Goldfinch, the eagerly awaited third novel of Donna Tartt, featured on many of our Christmas reading lists. As I devoured this wonderful repositioning of the Dickensian novel into the […]
Desmond O’Neill
Desmond O’Neill: Food for thought
My knowledge of eating disorders stems less from my medical training than from vicarious insights into their ravages in the milieu of my teenage and young adult daughters. Yet not […]
Desmond O’Neill: Four helicopters and a string quartet
Unlike last year, there was not a formal cultural event at this year’s European geriatric medicine congress. The organising committee may rightly have considered this superfluous with the glories of […]
Desmond O’Neill: Clinical glasshouses and stones
One of the positive aspects of working in smaller hospitals in Ireland is the professional mingling that takes place in local clinical societies. Living and working in a smaller pond […]
Desmond O’Neill: Striking doctors and a cruel cut
The strike was so much more straightforward in 1987. I was then a trainee member of the Council of the Irish Medical Organization and our task was to change an […]
Desmond O’Neill: Elysium—an effective Trojan horse for Obamacare and the social gradient
“Just enjoy the film, dad, you don’t always have to write about it!” is a familiar refrain from my family on our sporadic outings to the movies. Yet cinema was […]
Desmond O’Neill: A tale of three cities—geriatric medicine in Australia
Some minds improve by travel, wrote the nineteenth century poet and humorist, Thomas Hood: others, rather, resemble copper wire, or brass, which get the narrower by going farther. And so […]
Desmond O’Neill: Optimal ageing and the midnight sun
Helsinki in summer is a delight, its streetscapes of Russian influenced architecture illuminated and lifted by the interplay of the midnight sun and the ever present sea. The occasion was […]
Desmond O’Neill: Alex Ferguson and the Field Marshall
Field Marshall Mannerheim of Finland is one of the giant, if relatively under fêted, figures of European history. Called out of retirement at the age of 72 to lead tiny […]
Desmond O’Neill: Gerontolysis
In an era when didactic teaching in medical education is frowned upon and where workshops and problem based learning rule supreme, it is refreshing to be reminded of the powerful […]