Brooklyn Transplant

Medical trivia #4: Billroth and Brahms

Using language to convey the magic of Brahms would be like using a wooden classroom ruler to measure the speed of light. … Continue Reading →

Sweet Emma

The mostly unadorned, dark room slopes down from back to front. There’s room for perhaps 200 people but, as I soon learned, most stand and only about twenty people get to sit in the front, on the floor, on scattered… Continue Reading →

February 10, 2019 6

The greatest entertainer …

Some months ago, PBS broadcast a concert with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Bennett, who is 92 and about to begin a national tour, has, of course, been a major force in American music for many decades. Other than hearing… Continue Reading →

January 29, 2019 5

O. HENRY

Among my many inherited traits is a love of movies. Although not likely to be DNA-based, this characteristic, which was so strong in my mother, is one that I value highly and that gives me great pleasure. I particularly love… Continue Reading →

January 3, 2019 9

A President Lies in State

John F. Kennedy lying in state, November 24, 1963 On Friday, November 22, 1963, 55 years ago, I was a third-year medical student sitting in a lecture room on the second floor of Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. The lecture… Continue Reading →

December 4, 2018 4

The Dying Cadaver

The Spring 2018 issue of Rutgers Magazine, the magazine for alumni of the State University of New Jersey (Kate, my wife, is a Rutgers graduate), includes a one-page article, A High-Tech Anatomy Lesson, describing how medical students can be taught… Continue Reading →

November 6, 2018 8

Return to Bratislava

This year I will be making my third trip to Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic, once a part of the former Czechoslovakia which was a member of the Eastern Bloc, closely allied to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics… Continue Reading →

July 5, 2018 6

Diahann Carroll, Jaguar motor cars, Hillary and me

In the Random House Unabridged Dictionary the fifteenth, and final, definition for “crush” is: 15. Informal. a. an intense but usually short-lived infatuation. b. the object of such an infatuation. Diahann Carroll Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960)… Continue Reading →

May 1, 2018 16

Medical Trivia #3: Hadrian’s Earlobe

The Roman Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus) was born in Italica-Hispanica (modern day Seville, Spain) in 76 CE and died at his villa in Baiae, an ancient Roman town on the Gulf of Naples,… Continue Reading →

February 22, 2018 5

Three long steps to Montpelier

Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, is a small, surprisingly vibrant city in the middle of the state, between Burlington and Woodstock. The north branch of the Winooski River runs right under State Street and also under some of the buildings… Continue Reading →

October 16, 2017 12