Immunity and Vaccinations

I have it on good authority that when the family of Og, the caveman, came down with pertussis and he did not, he ...

FEBRUARY 17, 2025

Gifting

When I was still in clinical practice, I had many farmers as patients. There is, however, one I will always ...

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Viruses—Outnumbering the Stars

My first encounter with the power of a virus took place when I was 11 years old. I contracted a relatively mild ...

OCTOBER 8, 2024

Ubiquitous Bile Acids

Bile acids are stuff you make in the liver, store in the gallbladder (unless you have had a cholecystectomy) and ...

JUNE 26, 2023

What’s in a Name?

Remarkably, 8,000 or so medical eponyms—diseases, syndromes, procedures, rules—are named after a person ...

APRIL 4, 2023

Bowel Obstruction Revisited: From Wangensteen to Delaney

Oh my, oh my,” one of Owen H. Wangensteen’s favorite comments may well have been the first words he ...

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Curing Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes (“to pass through” in Greek) mellitus (“sweet, like honey” in Latin) was described ...

JUNE 27, 2022

Grandfather Did It

When it was discovered that Kamila Valieva, the magnificent 15-year-old ice skater competing for the Russian ...

APRIL 25, 2022

Oxygen Transport: Life Determinant

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to William Kaelin Jr., MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer ...

DECEMBER 19, 2019

Burnout in Surgery

The term “burnout,” or job-induced emotional exhaustion, was first introduced into the medical lexicon ...

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

33 Days in a Hospitalist Hospital

On Feb. 1, 2016, I was, for the first time in my life, bucked off a horse. I landed on my right side, broke 11 ...

MAY 17, 2016

Why an Open Abdominal Surgery Specialist Fellowship?

During a routine laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the surgeon finds the bile ductal anatomy confusing. He continues to ...

FEBRUARY 10, 2016