Happy Doctor’s Day, Maimonides

The Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, was born today (March 30) in 1135.  He was also a physician.  Many of his sayings about medicine are still quite relevant nearly 1000 years later, such as “The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.”

It is quite fitting that Doctor’s Day happens to be the birthday of a great physician.

The Austrians were as guilty as the Nazi Germans

Today (March 30) in 1945 Russian troops invaded Austria.  Austrians tend to portray themselves as a victim of Hitler Nazi Germany.  But, that is absolutely not the case.  They’re as guilty, if not more, as Nazi Germans.

When Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938; Austrians made up 8% of the total population, whereas 30% of high officials responsible of the Holocaust were Austrians.  Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, and Ernest Kaltenbrunner (head of Gestapo) were all Austrians.

In his In Search of Memory (the first one third of the book is an excellent review of the history of neuroscience), Eric Kandel has a chapter (Rediscovering Vienna via Stockholm) talks about this issue. When the president of Austria wrote to congratulate him, claiming him as an Austrian Nobel laureate (Being Jewish, Kandel, at age of 9, escaped from Vienna to the U.S. with his family in 1938).  He used this chance to organize a symposium to discuss Austria’s response to the Hitler period.  The future generation will learn no lesson from history denying the wrongdoing of that era.

Why read All Quiet on the Western Front?

To read is to find the truth and enjoy the beauty and this applies to science as well as humanity.  We tend to forget that there is beauty in science/mathematics, as Paul Dirac said “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.”

Books in humanity talk about beautiful people, minds and stories in beautiful language, and above all, the truth.  One only needs to read two chapters, or perhaps one, of All Quiet on the Western Front to know why it was one of the books burned by Hitler’s Nazi regime.  It is a fiction talking about the truth in the battle field and may be some of what I call “savage beauty”.

I picked up the book while reading WWI, but knowledge of WWI is not a prerequisite to enjoy this book.  It is a very small book; one can finish it in a day or two with no interruption or making notes.  I’ll give you a taste of some samples:

Go to the front:
There are rumors of an offense. . . . on the way to the front, they saw polished, brand new coffins.  They still smell of resins, and pine, and the forest.  There are at least a hundred.

“That's a good preparation for the offense,” says Muller, astonished.

“They are for us,” growls Detering.

“Don't talk rat,” says Kat to him angrily.

“You be thankful if you get so much as a coffin,” grins Tjaden, “they'll ship you a water proof sheet for your old Aunt Sally of a carcass.”

What earth means to a soldier:

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier.  When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often forever.

Earth!--Earth!--Earth!

Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man by fling himself and crouch down.  In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-own life.  Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips!

With the LINE I will not be rude

I do not text and try not to be “rude” by calling someone with a land phone or iPhone, lest I would be perceived still living in the stone age.  Thankfully now I have LINE to ‘talk’ to the loved ones as I type.

Transcendent joy for Amanda Knox

Italian Supreme Court acquits Amanda Knox of killing her roommate—a dramatic ending of this 8-year saga. “Transcendent joy” is what her lawyer used to describe this incredible feeling and experience during an interview by CNN Erin Burnett, who likes “transcendent joy” very much and repeated it twice, and the lawyer said “that is not good enough” to describe it.


Amanda Knox

I think “transcendent” is similar to heavenly or otherworldly in this use.

George Eliot also uses “transcendent” well.  I am half way through the Middlemarch.  And the following is how Eliot tells us the relationship between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw (Casaubon’s cousin; Casaubon is Dorothea’s husband, thirty some years her senior) will be a sexual one.  Upon an unexpected visit by Dorothea, this is how Eliot described Will’s response.

“Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made him imagine that every muscle in his body had passed the message of a magic touch.  And so it had.

For effective magic is transcendent nature; and she shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, . . .”

Eliot also uses “transcendent” in a love scene for Rosamond (before her marriage to Dr. Lydgate).

“She [Rosamond] blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light . . .”

Bill Gates is trying to take up French, so am I.

Like Bill Gates, I felt “pretty stupid” because I cannot speak any language other than English (I am probably “less stupid” than he as I at least can speak Chinese/Taiwanese).   He said, “I took Latin and Greek in high school and I guess it helps my vocabulary but I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.”  He is hoping to get time to study French (easier than Arabic or Chinese) and he envied that Mark Zuckerberg was able to do a Q&A in Mandarin with Chinese students; “incredible” he wrote.

café-au-lait (from UpToDate)

I’ll just try to learn French words in English for now.

George Orwell wrote that the term “cul de sac” is pretentious and unnecessary.  If he were a doctor he wouldn’t say that; one cannot escape “cul de sac” reading medicine.  Every student of medicine (in English) knows the pouch between the uterus and rectum is called Pouch of Douglas or better known as “cul de sac” (a dead end).  A procedure to aspirate the potential fluid here is called culdocentesis.

Seeing café-au-lait macule (brown flat spots), a doctor thinks about neurofibromatosis.

The sound of “Torsades de pointes” makes a doctor tremble; as it is a very serious cardiac arrhythmia that is caused by QT interval prolongation (medicine is not a topic of interest here).

An avant-garde composer is one who is innovative, non-traditional, creative and experimental or pioneering; the term seems to be reserved for use in art only, not in science.

Belle Époque is a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I.  I guess the American South would say their Belle Époque ended at the Civil War.  Belle is a beautiful woman or girl.

The architect was given carte blanche to build, landscape and furnish the house.  This means the architect was given all authority he needs to do whatever he sees it fit.    carte blanche ("white card" or blank check; unlimited authority)

A tête-à-tête home dinner is a private and intimate dinner between two persons.  tête-à-tête ("head to head"; an intimate get-together or private conversation between two people).

George Eliot uses tête-à-tête in Middlemarch on many occasions:

". . .and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch, though not one of the leading minds) was in tête-à-tête with Rosamond."

"Indeed, this tête-à-tête was one of Rosamond's objects in coming to Stone Court."

"he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a tête-à-tête , since Mrs. Vincy [Rosamond's mother] herself sat at the tea-table"

haute couture ("high sewing": trend-setting high fashion)

laissez-faire (“let do”; meaning leaving alone, or non-interference; often is used in economic state) The reaction against free trade and laissez-faire.  The people hold that laissez-faire could solve the economic problem of the British community.

hors d'œuvre (appetizer); bon appétit ("good appetite"; enjoy your meal)

Churchill felt the French city/port Le Havre should be just Havre; the “Le” should be dropped in English version.

Royal visit

Being an Anglophile I should pay attention to the royal visit to the U.S. the past few days.  Prince Charles has been here twenty some times.  I recall when I first came here in 1971, he was here quite often; that was the days before Princess Diana.  Dean Martin once “roasted” him in a “Man of the Hour” TV program, saying at the end of a date, the prince would ask, “Your palace, or mine?”




Prince Charles at Washington's tomb

Given the places he (and his wife, the future queen) visited (Lincoln Memorial, National Archives, Shakespeare Theater Co, Mount Vernon, Lincoln’s summer cottage at Silver Spring), I can be his travel company.

Prince Charles viewed the 1297 version of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives.  I often wonder what kind of emotion evoked in him he himself being a “historical” figure.

One of the gifts he received is a US patent application of a polo stick submitted by Lord Louis Mountbatten (a great grandson of Queen Victoria, his grand uncle).  Prince Charles plays polo often in his younger days.

I was dismayed when Lord Mountbatten was killed by IRA in 1979.  He was a heroic fighter against Nazi Hitler and then Japanese aggressor.  Like JFK, the destroyer he commanded was sunk and he swam to the shore and then took charge of the rescue operation.



Lord Mountbatten, FDR and Churchill

He later became the Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia Command and on September 12, 1945 received the Japanese surrender of all Japanese forces with South East Asia Command.

To kill a hero fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is inexcusable regardless what political motive might be.

Pittsburgh has a good fortune to be named after a great English statesman, William Pitt

Pittsburgh has a good fortune to be named after a great English statesman, William Pitt.  Though he was a Prime Minister for only two years (1766-1768), he was quite influential for his long political career.  When Pitt first joined the Ministry as Secretary of State in 1756 Frederick the Great declared, “England has long been a labour, but at last she has brought forth a man.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

Churchill wrote that William Pitt ranks with Marlborough [John Churchill, Winston’s ancestor] as the greatest English man in the century between 1689 and 1789.  William Pitt saw the beginning of the British Empire.

Americans should be forever grateful to this great Englishman who was quite sympathetic to the cause and struggle of the colonists/patriots.

Dumping the tea cargoes into the sea at Boston Harbor in December 1773 was, as John Adams wrote, “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid, and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epoch in history.”

When the news reached London the cry went up for coercion and many harsh laws passed to punish Boston.  William Pitt pleaded for conciliation.

.

William Pitt became the first Earl of Chatham.  This is why Pittsburgh has Chatham University and Chatham Center, part of which is Marriott Hotel.

In his last speech in the House of Lords (April 7, 1778) he warned the nation of the dangers of French intervention and the use of German mercenaries, “My lords, if I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms—never, never, never.”  He asked the recall of English troops sent to America.

On May 11 he died as his son William was reading to him from Homer the solemn scene of Hector’s funeral and the deep despair of Troy.

Why I read Middlemarch?

The photo is my “dream” house; one will be greeted by a wall of books coming up from the stairs; one doesn’t have to go to the “study room” to see the books.  Books are supposed to be everywhere: desk, table, bed or even floor.

I am still reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch; with the speed at which I have been reading, I probably can never finish it.  I have the Middlemarch book around in the house, but I read it mostly in my iPads or Kindles, two of each.

I have been reading more and more eBooks or iBooks. I even opened an account with Overdrive, so I can borrow eBooks from the libraries.  But I still cannot give up the print books. 

There are doctors and medicine in Middlemarch. When she writes about Dr. Lydgate; she writes as if she were a doctor herself or as if she knew why or how I like medicine; I was amazed, but then I learned she read about medicine; she read Lancet.  She had Dr. Lydgate studied at Edinburgh, London and Paris as she learnt it from Lancet that the three cities were the major medical centers in her days.  While visiting Oxford during the time she was working on Middlemarch, she watched a neurologist (or a neuroanatomist, I doubt there was neurosurgeon in her days) dissects the brain.

She also studied how the medical care was delivered and how doctors practicing medicine in early 1800s when the story was supposed to happen.  I’ll show you the following two paragraphs from Middlemarch to make a point.

“Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and something like pity for those less lucky men who were not of his profession. . . . I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors.  There is nothing like the medical profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too.”  (Lydgate read far into the smallest hour, like I do.)

“In short, Dr. Spragg had weights, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to circumvent it.  They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt for each other's skill.”

“Say that I slew them not?” Nuremberg Trials and Shakespeare’s play



Robert Jackson in Nuremberg Trials

In order to fully appreciate what Justice Robert Jackson (also a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) said in Nuremberg Trials, one needs to know a bit history of Richard III and Shakespeare’s play with the same title.

In his demand of a guilty verdict, Jackson said toward the end of his speech:

It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ....” If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

Jackson was referring to a scene from Richard III, in which Duke of Gloucester (before he became Richard III) persuades Lady Anne (whose father-in-law, Henry VI, was killed by Richard III; Anne’s husband, Edward, was also killed during the Battle of Tewksburg, so “He begged of the widow”, who is Lady Anne) to marry him.

Richard of Gloucester: Say that I slew them not?
Lady Anne: Then say that they were not slain, But dead they are...
                 Richard III:  Act 1 Scene 2

NurembergTrials

It is of interest to see that Justice Jackson likened Duke of Gloucester (future Richard III) to the Nazi criminals.  “bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King”.  I have tirelessly tried to defend for Richard III who is the most unfairly maligned England king in history.

The Act I Scene 2 is a very weird scene of love pursuit; many memorable, rhetoric lines:

Richard: Fairer than tongue can name thee.
Anne: Fouler than heart can think thee.

(When Richard says Anne’s beauty is beyond any word, Anne retorted that Richard is wicked beyond belief.)

When Anne looks scornfully at Richard, Richard says,

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it were made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

The following link is a YouTube of the Act I Scene 2 of Richard III, about 25 minutes long.  The soliloquy of Richard III that concludes this scene shows how Richard III’s fate in history is doomed by the Bard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzRBwiTJIg0

Holding Hands (牽手)

詩珊 (daughter of my cousin, 陳英毅) and 宣辰 (a chief physician in physical medicine & rehabilitation at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Lin Kou, Taipei) recently got married. This photo was taken by 陳英明  (also my cousin, brother of 英毅)

No wonder Taiwanese call the spouse “牽手” (holding hands). 

牽手(詞曲：李子恆 部分摘錄) (2015/03/08 陳英明先生攝)

    也許牽了手的手　前程不一定好走
　也許有了伴的路　今生還要更忙碌
　所以牽了手的手　來生還要一起走...
　所以有了伴的路　沒有歲月可回頭

陳 英明: 所謂"幸福"，就是這種自然，永遠的手牽著手，表情洋溢著純真自然的感覺，真棒！宣辰&詩珊，阿伯真為你們感到高興。同時也謝謝你們，因為有你們這對佳偶，阿伯也分享到了甜蜜與幸福.

 

The force needed to crack open the seed coat

Speaking of the force of the plant growth, the first leaf (called cotyledon) has to crack open the hard seed coat.  If you were to try to open a seed with your hands, then you would know what force involved.

The first leaf is actually part of the embryo inside the seed; it can carry out photosynthesis once it emerges from soil and comes out of the seed coat.  I am still trying to find out the difference between the first leaf and all the other leaves.

Pushing up and out of soil is a natural wonder

I spotted a few seedling emerged from the soil two days ago; they were greeted with special attention as is the first born.  They had photo-op and even had an appearance in Facebook; they were pleased many “like” them.

They are the envy to those falling behind; that is enough incentive or motivation for the others to follow suit; more came out today.  I am always amazed at the way they came out, overcoming gravity and the weight of soil covering them, given the fact that they are so fragile.

There are only four forces on earth: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear.  So the force of interest here is gravity.  The gravity signals the young seedlings to push the stem up and roots down.

The way the plants grow in response to gravity is called geotropism: The stems push up is called negative geotropism whereas the roots push down is positive geotropism.  How they find their way is another thing to marvel at.

Churchill cried often in public

Churchill was a man of letter and a man of action.  Graduating from Sandhurst, he was a military man by trade and training.  During the WWI when he was released from the five-man War Council, he immediately resigned from Government and went to the Western Front to become a battalion commander with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Though a macho guy he might be, he cried in public on numerous occasions in his “long and not entirely uneventful” life. Here is one example.

When Churchill visited Paris on 11/10/1944 (after the liberation of Paris and before the end of the war), de Gaulle treated him with a splendid parade along Ave Champs-Elysees from Place de la Concorde to Arc de Triomphe.  They laid a wreath at the Arcde Triomphe, at the Clemenceau Statue, and at Foch's tomb.  The crowd chanted “Chur-chill!” and according to Eden, “not for one minute did Winston stop crying . . . he could have filled buckets.”

Janice once asked me how this “Victory Walk” compared with the victory parade for President Woodrow Wilson in December 1918.

There is no comparison.  There were about two million people (war time Paris population was only one million) came out to welcome President Wilson─“the  most massive display of acclamation and affection ever heaped upon a single human being.” As it was Americans who came to the rescue when England and France locked in a bloody stalemate with Germany from 1914 to 1917.

Scruff: learn the vocabulary reading the comic strip

It was said that Churchill’s vocabulary has been estimated at 65,000 and he used it well, especially the short ones.  He was excited when he first learnt the word “stunt” imported from America.

I may know the word “vicissitude” and how to use it, but I do not know “scruff” is used to mean facial hair after a shave; it also means “one that is worthless or contemptible; ruffian).  This comic strip also has a word “flaunt” for which I wrote a post that is worth your while to re-read.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-language-flaunt.html

FDR had to explain to Churchill the word of “lick”: an American favorite,

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/03/americans-like-to-say-lick.html

Gardening in the winter; gardening is the best thing we can do on earth

The photo taken this morning showing our garden was covered by about half a foot of snow.  But our garden season has begun in earnest indoors.  We placed the seeds inside a plasty bag with a moist paper towel as their comfortable bed a few weeks ago.  When the roots grew we planted them in the paper cup inside a plasty cup on 2/28/15.  Yesterday a few souls began to emerge to brave the new world; they are 台灣南瓜,  台灣葫蘆瓜， 菜瓜.

We’re particularly pleased that luffa (菜瓜) did come out; not only are they slow growing, they are “high maintenance”.

If the poor souls in Boston or Connecticut are tired of being shut-in by snow; let the gardening begin, as garden is synonymous with spring, growth, hope and exaltation. 

Voltaire spent his last 20 years living in Ferney (now called Ferney-Voltaire), France, cultivating his garden, saying it is “the best thing we can do on earth.”  CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is nearby.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain had descended across the Continent

Today (March 5) in 1946 Churchill made his famous iron curtain speech (“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain had descended across the Continent.”) at the Westminster College in a Missouri small town, Fulton.

It was the idea of the president of this small college.  He asked Harry Vaughan (then President Truman’s military aid and who once played football at Westminster College) to make the connection.  Truman liked the idea; he wrote “This is a wonderful school in my home state.  Hope you can do it.  I’ll introduce you.  Best regards.”

While playing cards on the train on the way to Missouri from the White House.  Churchill said “Mr. President, I think that when we are playing poker I will call you Harry.”

“All right, Winston,” Truman replied.

 

Truman & Churchill en route to Fulton, Missouri (photo credit: Boris Johnson's The Churchill Factor)

The response to the speech was quite negative.  The Wall Street Journal said the U.S. had no need for alliance with any other nation.  Walter Lippmann said the speech was an “almost catastrophic blunder.”  Stalin said it was a “call to war” with the Soviet Union.

 

Of course, the course of the history has turned out that Churchill was right; he was just ahead of every one else.

George Washington and smallpox vaccine

An article in today (March 5) JAMA Dermatology saying George Washington advocated smallpox vaccine and was a public health activist.  I had a letter-to-the-editor talking about this that was published at the Observer-Reporter exactly five years ago today (March 5, 2010).

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2010/03/george-washingtons-wisdom-my-letter-to.html

It was indeed a less well known fact; many physicians couldn’t believe it when I said it at Sermo then.  Some researched it and told me much more about how that happened.  At Sermo if one tells something few know, one ends up learning more.

Quincy Market in the reflecting pool

Janice showed me this photo of Quincy Market in Boston she saw it online; the icy snow on the ground creates a beautiful reflecting pool.  Having an icy and snowy Boston, who needs to go to Venice?

Boring scientist revisited

National Cancer Institute (NCI) director Dr. Harold Varmus is to step down at the end of March.  He is a giant in science/medicine; his Nobel Prize (1989) is the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes.  I had an article about him (“The boring scientist”) in my blog on 1/17/2007 before he became NCI director; he was then the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC and was the NIH director before that.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/search?q=varmus

Talking about the genetic basis of cancer, Renato Dulbecco came to my mind.  I wrote my version of his obituary when the Wall Street Journal inexcusably neglected to have one in 2012.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/02/remembrance-renato-dulbecco-1914-2012.html

Boring scientists; boring scientific writings.  But this is real “life changing medicine” (borrowed from UPMC motto/ad).