History of Medicine

St. Patrick's Day celebrates the patron saint of the Irish who brought Christianity to Ireland and taught about the Holy Trinity using a three-leafed clover (hence the significance of the clover). Over time, he also came to be associated with healing of several diseases like epilepsy. He is associated with some 50 holy wells in Ireland, whose waters are supposed to help with a variety of ailments from toothache to eye and skin ailments. While these superstitions have long passed, I think it's important to celebrate the contributions of the Irish to modern medicine on a day that celebrates Irish culture and traditions. St. Patrick's Well in Belcoo, Ireland Of all Irish doctors, the story I found most captivating is that of Dr. James Barry, nee Margaret Bulkley, who disguised herself as a man in order to practice medicine in 1790 in Cork, Ireland. She became the first female doctor in all of the U.K. and also the first one to perform a successful caesarian operation. Margaret

Happy Pi Day. On March 14 (3.14 for the uninitiated), we celebrate the special number pi which has so much importance and use across all practical fields from the obvious (geometry, astronomy, architecture) to the obscure (music theory, communications, quantum physics). It is often called the most important number in the universe. Interestingly, Pi Day happens to coincide with Einstein's birthday, which is quite apt in my opinion because pi represents a mathematical wonder and Einstein surely was a human wonder. The discovery of the number pi is credited to Greek mathematician, Archimedes, in the 3rd century BC when studying the relationship between a circle's circumference to its diameter (the ratio is pi) - hence the Greek alphabet name. However, even before that, all the way back in 1800 BCE, the Babylonians knew of it and had approximated the value in base 60 as 25/8 or 3.125.  The beauty of pi is that the digits don't end - in mathematical terms, it is an irrational an

As we mark the second anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic today (March 11, 2020 was when the WHO declared the coronavirus disease as a pandemic), I thought it would be interesting to compare it with other historical pandemics once again. The most recent pandemic before the current one was the Spanish flu outbreak that took place right after World War I. It was caused by an H1N1 virus outbreak (origin unknown but suspected to be Kansas, USA!) that spread worldwide during 1918-1919. It was carried to all corners of the world by troops returning home from combat and infected 1/3rd of the world's population (500 million people). The death count was over 50 million people. We are fast approaching the same number of infections for Covid-19, with the worldwide number of infections reported to be over 450 million today according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of deaths, thankfully, is much lower than the Spanish flu, but is still a shockingly high number exce

After my last few posts on stress and happiness, it is only fitting that I write on mental health today which is designated as the World Teen Mental Wellness Day. According to the American Psychological Association, Gen Z has the worst mental health of any generation. The Teen Mental Wellness Day was designed to normalize conversations and remove the stigmas surrounding teen mental health issues.  Mental health has been a touchy subject in many cultures, including mine. And mental health is thought to be a more "modern" concept or problem. But looking back at ancient medicine, the same issues around mental health existed for centuries. Mental health was first considered by Hippocrates whose “healthy mind in a healthy body” approach was the main component of ancient Greek medicine. In fact, mental care formed one of the three main categories in Hippocratic medicine along with physical health promotion and illness/trauma care. Hippocrates believed that mental illnesses can be t