Category Archives: Medico

John Gamgee (1831-1894): The Iceman Cometh

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John GamgeeDr. John Gamgee was born in Florence Italy in 1831, the son of a Scottish veterinarian who wanted his children to have a broad education. John eventually graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in London. He thrived in that field. In 1858, he founded the New Veterinary School in Edinburgh in 1858, and later the Edinburgh Veterinary Review. In 1863, he organized the first International Veterinary Congress in Hamburg Germany.

So far, so dull, unless you are interested in Victorian academic politics. A few years later, the United States government invited him to consult on the matter of lung plague and cattle fever in Texas. He lectured widely in America, promoting his novel view on the pathogenic theory of medicine. That is, that disease was transmitted by microorganisms. It was a theory for which claim he was widely ridiculed.

His so-called “rollerskate” was less controversial, but it was his explorations into the mechanics of refrigeration more that makes him interesting to the general reader. Continue reading →

Dr James Still (1812-1888): Did No Harm

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And rather a lot of good, if contemporary accounts are to be believed.

He was the son of slaves who bought their freedom in Maryland and moved east to New Jersey for some peace of mind.  The father was of a strict frame of mind:

“I often thought his whole soul was wrapped in the twenty-fourth verse of the thirteenth chapter of Proverbs, which reads, ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chastiseth him betimes.’ I had no particular love for that passage of Scripture.” Continue reading →

Count Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737 – 1772) Lèse Majesté

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We got a copy of A Royal Affair the other week, drawn in mostly on the basis of the costume drama appeal.  It’s good stuff, and the more I watched it, the more I  wondered how much the film makers had fiddled with the truth.  I mean to say,  American movies that tear their stories from yesterday’s headlines are almost invariably poppycock.

The Danes, as it turns out, are a bit better at the whole thing, and if you want to avoid spoilers, stop now and get yourself the video. This post isn’t going anywhere.

So – Struensee was a precocious son of a German superintendent (much like a bishop) of Schleswig-Holstein.   He trained in medicine, getting degreed at a young age, and spent his off hours rebelling against the stodgy doctrines of his elders. Continue reading →

Ecaterina Teodoroiu, 1894-1917 : “Forward! I’m still with you!”

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And, to complete a hat trick (and because I have an admiration and liking  for things Romanian), we turn now to Ecaterina Teodoroiu, The Heroine from the Jiu

She was born one of eight children to a poor peasant family in Targa Jiu in Southern Romania and spent her earlier years studying to become a  school teacher.   Certainly she looks the part.

Of course, looks can be deceiving.

Romania did not enter the war until 1916.  In the early years, the kingdom exploited all manner of unlikely resources, including the Scouts.  As a nurse with that organization (they were instrumental in moving and tending the wounded), she was able to visit her brother, a sergeant, at the front. She came to appreciate the patriotism and camaraderie that war can create in a group of men.  Continue reading →

Flora Sandes (Yudenitch), 1876–1956: Easily Bored

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“When a very small child, I used to pray every night that I might wake up in the morning and find myself a boy.”

Instead she was always what she had been born, an Anglican vicar’s daughter,  and a product of Ireland and Surrey.  If not a boy, she was still able to get a full measure of  ridin’ and shootin’ and such like typically English country pursuits.  And, in due course, she would become the only English woman to fight on the front lines of World War One.  For Serbia.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  She first had to get through finishing school in Switzerland, and with a small legacy from an uncle and the money she earned as a secretary, to pick up fencing and the rudiments of first aid.  Also how to drive, which in her case was in her own French roadster, a Sizaire-Naudin to be specific.

Continue reading →

Johann Konrad Dippel, 1673 – 1734: Walk of Life

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A theologian, medical doctor, and alchemist.  He it was who came up with Berliner Blau, aka Preussisch Blau, aka Prussian Blue.

Dibbel was the son of a vicar, and one of those articulate and passionate golden boys too smart for his own good and made the worse by a touch of innate contrariness. for its own sake.  His M.A. thesis in theology was titled  De Nihilo.

However goth seeming in theory,  in practice he was quite fervent as far as his theology went.  Lutheran theology, that is.  Nothing more rancorous than a dispute between revolutionaries.  In the case of Dippel, it boiled down to – Orthodoxy Good, Pietism Bad.  On later reflection and perhaps nudged by the cold fact that Orthodoxy did not look good on job applications, he would reverse the order.   Just as well, really.  Under Orthodoxy, he had killed a man in a duel, a misadventure that forced him on the road (something he would have to get used to). Continue reading →