Arthur Williams is a general surgeon.
Surgery to remove the gallbladder is a relatively late intervention. The first laparotomy was performed in 1807 in Danville, Kentucky, and surgeons like Billroth and Kocher, were removing thyroids and even parts of the esophagus as early as the 1870s; the pricklish gallbladder was not completely excised until 1882. For years previously, the medical and surgical dogma was that the gallbladder was an essential organ and couldn’t safely be …
I am in a select crowd.
I have been fortunate enough to help some special people in their time of pain and heartache and bewilderment, facing operation or cancer or other ailments. I was fortunate to even get into medical school when I did; my grades weren’t too good, and no doubt in my mind were I to apply today, I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of getting into …
Though pushed to the back-burner by the never-ending orange election drama, the Supreme Court, with its significant conservative majority earned against the run of play, (to borrow a metaphor from sport) is one decision away from potential political irrelevance. Is there a way forward for the Supreme Court? Conservative hypocrisy and liberal outrage at the recent Republican machinations to pack the court with conservative jurists out of step with …
An excerpt from The Surgeon’s Obol.
July 1, 8 p.m.
“Isabella Isaksen,” I said with an arm extended. “Most people call me ‘Izzie’.”
“Mike Gunderson,” came the reply. Most people called him Gundy, but he didn’t feel the need to let me, the goddamn intern, in on this. And …
Recently surfing the far reaches of Netflix for a program on World War II that I hadn’t yet seen, I found a low budget serial documentary dealing with air power in war and in peace. The producers profiled individuals who had contributed to the eventualities of the airplane as a weapon of war or, conversely, as a beacon of man’s progressive evolution from terrestrial prisoner to celestial astronaut.
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