From Healthy China 2020 to Healthy China 2030 Seven decades ago, China’s healthcare was characterised by barefoot doctors who demonstrated the contribution of primary care to improved population health. Subsequent […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Melancholic
The fourth of Galen’s four fluid humours of the body, μέλαινα χολή, black bile, was associated, when in supposed excess, with a melancholic temperament, as defined in the OED: “Originally … […]
Desmond O’Neill: Technology and the medical humanities
One of the great challenges of progress in the medical humanities is that of time and space. Interested clinicians tend not to work in the arts blocks of universities, and […]
Richard Smith: Working to make cholera a disease of the past
Until last year the Cholera Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, could have a thousand admissions a day before and after the monsoon. On a calm day now it still has hundreds. […]
Richard Smith: Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world, and why are Facebook and Harry Potter so popular?
When you enter the room in the Louvre that contains the Mona Lisa you find people crowded around the bullet-proof case that contains the Mona Lisa and largely ignoring the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Rhetoric and oratory
You might think that “rhetoric” and “oratory” came from the same linguistic root. But it appears not, which is fitting, considering the difference in meaning. Scholars tell us that rhetoric […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: leave cocktails to the bar staff
Cocktail isn’t a common word in PubMed®, but its prevalence increased eight-fold between 1975 and 2015. Cirrhosis is six times more common but increased only 1.3-fold, which is probably not […]
Tiago Villanueva: What is it like working as an “Uber-style” doctor?
The steady “Uberification” of modern life continues, and with it have come companies that provide “Uber style” medical home visits for patients. KNOK began operating in Portugal in December 2015. A […]
Richard Smith: Death and the inescapable logic of greed
Martin Shkreli is the man who became infamous through buying the rights to Darapim (pyrethamine) and raising the price by 5000% from $13.50 to $750 per pill. There is, I […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Presidential rhetoric
The main current meaning of rhetoric is “the art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others” (OED). But in ancient Greece and Rome rhetoric was an […]