Title: “Einstein’s Abdominal Enigma: The Medical Odyssey Unveiled by Dr. Rudolph Nissen” Introduction: Albert Einstein, renowned for his brilliant mind, faced an enduring mystery that even he struggled to decipher. Chronic abdominal pain, occasionally escalating to the point of vomiting, haunted the physicist for years. In the fall of 1948, the ailing genius turned to …
Rudolph Nissen (sometimes spelled Rudolf Nissen) (September 5, 1896 – January 22, 1981) was a surgeon who chaired surgery departments in Turkey, the United States and Switzerland. The Nissen fundoplication, a surgical procedure for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease, is named after him. Nissen completed the first pneumonectomy by a Western physician in 1931. …
One of the first images of an individual with a hernia is seen in the picture to the left Phoenician terra-cotta figure showing an umbilical hernia in a woman in the fifth or fourth century BC. In the sixth dynasty of Ptah-hotep, the relief picture to the left shows workers in the field with umbilical …
Billroth (1878) envisaged prostheses before Bassini’s sutured cure (1887). Phelps (1894) reinforced with silver coils. Metals were replaced by plastic (Aquaviva 1944). Polypropylene (Usher 1962), resisting infection, became popular. Usher instituted tensionless, overlapping preperitoneal repair. Spermatic cord was parietalized, to obviate keyholing. Stoppa (1969) championed the sutureless Cheatle-Henry approach encasing the peritoneum. His technique, “La …
Robert Liston The nineteenth century AD Amputated the leg in under 2 1⁄2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the …
Emil Theodor Kocher (25 August 1841 – 27 July 1917) was a Swiss physician and medical researcher who received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. Among his many accomplishments are the introduction and promotion of aseptic surgery and scientific methods in …
He asked for a ‘training period’ of six month, in which the constructed two instruments and tested them. One being a retractor and the other a ‘royally curved’ scalpel, which looks a bit like a scythe. Monsieur Félix, with official allowance, tested those on three to four guinea pigs per week and 75 men from …
William Halsted The inventor of diathermy, which Cushing brought along with him to perform surgeries in order to utilize the specifically created diathermy for him. He first used it in brain and nerve operations, marking one of the greatest advancements in modern surgery. William T. Bovie (September 11, 1882 – January 1, 1958) was an …
Theodore Billroth, you know, was the first to remove cancer from the rectum, not just the stomach. On January 29, 1881, after many ill-fated attempts, Billroth performed the first successful resection for antral carcinoma on Therese Heller, who lived for almost 4 months and died of liver metastases. He accomplished this operation by closing the …
The name “Munchausen syndrome” derives from Baron Munchausen, a literary character loosely based on the German nobleman Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720–1797). The historical baron became a well-known storyteller in the late 18th century for entertaining dinner guests with tales about his adventures during the Russo-Turkish War. In 1785 German-born writer and con …
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