Recently, I had a conversation with my colleague Dr. Zrinzo, who you will remember conversed with me on the subject of “America’s gun culture.” The conversation in fact continued, and the subject of “female genital mutilation” (FGM) came up. This time Dr. Z blamed the three monotheistic religions, particularly the Catholic faith. I thought this […]
A book review of The Story of Medicine by Victor Robinson, MD. Dr. Victor Robinson was Professor of History of Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia.[1] Because the history of medicine has been neglected for decades, this specialty will no longer be found listed among the faculty or the subject of any medical school
A history of medicine from a secular humanist perspective! Read More »
Six years ago I was asked to address the Western Society of Neurosurgery comparing the candidates for President Barack Obama and John McCain. I was very blunt, but analytical about both, but my comments about Obama were not well received by the liberal audience. Unfortunately, what I said has come true. But people will forget that also. The
The World — Socio-economics and Politics: 2015 update by James I. Ausman, MD, PhD Read More »
Suleiman the Magnificent: Scourge of Heaven by Antony Bridge is an engaging, but not exhaustive, narrative of the major events in the life and times of the great Ottoman Sultan Suleiman (r. 1520-1566). I was not disappointed in this book, which reads like a charming storybook. The tome is at times suspenseful, always informative, and
Suleiman the Magnificent and His Time Read More »
The Galleys at Lepanto by Jack Beeching (1982) is a marvelous book, so well researched and mellifluously narrated as to read almost as a fairy tale or an epic romance of yore, elegantly scribed in poetic prose. Foremost among the knights-errant in this tale of chivalry is Don John of Austria, illegitimate son of Holy
Moghul by Alan Savage, a pseudonym for a prolific British novelist, is a historic novel of adventure, sex, and brutality of epic proportions. As with Ottoman, Alan Savage’s previous dazzling adventure tome, this novel concerns and revolves around a fictitious (and not quite) renegade English family of male descendants, the Blunts, who while preserving some
From Babur to Aurangzeb — India under the Moghuls Read More »
