Goya’s Physician and the Art of Caring

I recently went to Boston to see the Goya exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and was thrilled to see one of my favorite paintings by this artist – Self Portrait with Dr. Arrias. The painting was on loan from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts – a museum I never...

Insights into Geriatrics from Cartoonist Roz Chast

I’ve never posted a book review but will make an exception for this amazing new graphic memoir.  Roz Chast, a beloved and well known cartoonist for the New Yorker, has written a brilliant book that should be required reading for the geriatric curriculum. It is...

The Enigma of the Historiated “V” in Vesalius’s Fabrica

This post continues to mark the 500th birthday of the great anatomist Andreas Vesalius, whose masterpiece tome, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, skillfully combined art and medicine. Today I will discuss the enigma of the historiated V that was introduced in the 1555...

The Old Man of Lake Titicaca

In 2010 the closing of St. Vincents Hospital in Manhattan gifted me with time to indulge my wanderlust, and so I went to Lake Titicaca in the Bolivian highlands of South America to celebrate the winter solstice with the shamans. On this trip I discovered a ceramic...

Jewish History in Vesalius’s Fabrica

This is another post to mark the 500th birthday of Andreas Vesalius, author of the great anatomy text entitled De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) – the lavishly illustrated masterpiece that combined art and medicine. The Fabrica will be 472...

Arion Triumphant

This post is written in honor of the 500th birthday of the great anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, who combined art and medicine in his landmark masterpiece, De Humani Corporis Fabrica. I am a lifelong fan of Vesalius and currently collaborating with the physician-scholar...