George M Weisz

University of New South Wales (Australia)

Background: Extermination via starvation was described in detail as an alternative or precursor to the final solution during the Holocaust in World War II. The main causes of death in the ghettos were exhaustion, environmental conditions (inadequate protection in extreme climates), infectious diseases, or starvation. In previous studies on the Lod...

Background: Medical records discovered after the liberation of ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe are unique documents that report on the suffering of inmates, on ravaging infectious diseases, and on starvation-related organ degeneration and the resulting mortality. We offer a pathogenetic explanation for the scarcity of acute myocardial infarction i...

Today, in the 21st century, most people are aware of the term genocide. However, few people are aware that this term only entered the English language in the 1940s, as a result of the dedicated work of a brilliant and successful man who deprived himself of a private family life so that he could be free to fight for his ideas. Although Raphael Lemki...

The genocide effected by the Nazi regime during World War II, intended for the local population in Eastern Europe, took the form of allocation of daily food rations: 100% for the Germans; 70% for the Poles; 30% for Greeks; 20% for Jews. Hermann Göring, the Reichsmarschall of the Nazi Empire created a blueprint for full alimentation of the occupying...

Background: Germany was a scientifically advanced country in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in medicine, with a major interest in research and the treatment of tuberculosis. From 1933 until 1945, Nazi Germany perverted scientific research through criminal experimentations on captured prisoners of war and on "subhumans" by scientif...

Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) - associated vasculitis is a severe autoimmune disorder. Its prognosis has been markedly improved by the introduction of immunosuppressive treatments. Nevertheless, this has been associated with an increased incidence of malignancy. We report the case of a 60-year-old woman who presented C-ANCA vasculitis...

Bartolomeo Vivarini (1432-1499) was the most prolific member of a prominent 15th-century Venetian family of artists who specialised in religious art, particularly altarpieces. Unlike their Florentine counterparts, Venetian artists of this period were typically more concerned with decorative effects than with accuracy of description, so their painti...

Background: Giacomo Ceruti was a renowned painter in northern Italy during the middle third of the 18th century, although he is not well-known today. He produced pictures in several different genres but his reputation after his death was based primarily on his portrayal of beggars and poor working people; hence, his posthumous nickname, il Pitocch...

Background: Throughout history, studies on episodes of famine have led to the discovery of metabolic abnormalities and hormonal aberrations as well as an increased incidence of cancer and mental health conditions. Starvation during early life is thought to nfluence the programming of childhood and adult bone metabolism, which may result in poor bo...

Despite daunting circumstances, history is full of stories of men and women incarcerated by the Nazis, who risked their lives to save others. In some cases, the moral dilemma faced by these people presented an unquestionable challenge-particularly for those in the medical profession who had taken an oath to save life. This paper presents the dramat...

Background: The discovery of Jewish babies who were born in Nazi concentration camps and survived seems miraculous, but this phenomenon did occur toward the end of World War II. The lives of a small group of mothers and surviving children are of both historical and medical interests. Their survival shows additional support for the hypothesis that...

This chapter deals with the bone metabolic syndrome programmed by fetal nutritional deprivation, and the effect of compensatory growth from over-feeding in early life. The prophylaxis and treatment of the resulting conditions of osteoporosis and osteopenia are complex processes and depend on multi-professional cooperation. Aspects of nutrition-depe...

Examination of the four saints in Filippino Lippi’s Magrini Altarpiece (c. 1482) shows that they all have hand deformities of various kinds. The two saints on the viewer’s left, St Rocco and St Sebastian, are portrayed as young, aristocratic men. Those on the viewer’s right, St Jerome and St Helena, are depicted as a much older man and a young woma...

Roderigo Lopez, former Physician-in-Chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England, was a controversial figure in his time and continues to be the subject of controversy. Much has been written about his religious practice, politics, and guilt, or lack thereof, with regard to charges of treason to the Crown. However, the fact remains that Lopez was the only...

Jusepe de Ribera's seventeenth-century painting devoted to the sense of taste, part of a series on the five senses, depicts a man from one of ‘the humbler walks of life’ enjoying his meal. The redness of the man's cheeks and nose, and the swollen index finger on his left hand, are discussed in relation to the food and drink shown in the painting. I...

Background: Starvation in early life can lead to premature metabolic syndrome and bone demineralization. Osteoporosis in the Jewish population may not yet be a recognized syndrome, but the harsh conditions to which Holocaust survivors were exposed may have increased the incidence of the condition. Immigrants and refugees who came to Israel from Ea...

Born in Portugal and the son of Marranos (Christianized Jews from Spain), Eliahu de Luna Montalto lived during a particularly harsh period for the Jewish people. Throughout Europe, the situation for Jews was unfavorable; laws had been passed forbidding them to live in England for the past 300 years, and for the past 200 years in France. Additionall...

A fifteenth-century Florentine altarpiece painted by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Antonio (1433-1498) and Piero (1443-1496), shows three saints with evident deformities of the hands and feet. The pathologies concerned are tentatively identified, and various rationales for their presence in the painting are discussed. Of particular importance is the loc...

This article analyses the nature of the multiple finger anomalies found in portraits by the French Renaissance artistic dynasty, the Clouets. The multiplicity of finger anomalies could be either innocent congenital variants, or pathological and traumatic deformities. In view of the presence of such 'beautifying variations' in the works of other Ren...

Deformity of the breast and axilla observed in famous paintings is a fascinating field for the medico-artists. The attempt of a retrospective diagnosis of breast tumors is highly challenging. This paper deals with a Rubens painting portraying the heroine Judith with a visible but previously unreported left breast mass. Though speculative, the prese...

Judith was a legendary Hebrew heroine who beheaded the general Holofernes and saved the children of Israel from destruction by the Assyrian army. In the Book of Judith, which is still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles, Judith is presented as an illustrious woman who defeated the enemy using her virtue and fortitude. The present...

Whilst painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo Buonarroti left an autographical sketch that revealed a prominence at the front of his hyper-extended neck. This image was recently diagnosed as goiter. The poet Michelangelo in a sonnet dated 1509 described himself as being afflicted by goiter similarly to the cats in the northern Itali...

The authors present an image of the Madonna and Child painted by one of the less well-known Italian artists of the Renaissance. The appearance of the child in this work raises the question of whether his obvious physical deformities were deliberately portrayed as an empathic gesture toward children with disabilities. Various retrospective diagnoses...

Feelings of guilt have tormented Holocaust survivors, ranging from immediately after the liberation to later in life, for shorter or longer periods, and persisting for some throughout their entire post-war lives. Descriptions of the guilt experienced by survivors of the Nazi camps occupy an impressive amount of literature: “Why me?” was the questio...

Two paintings of older men by Rembrandt (1609–1669) are examined to demonstrate that historical attitudes toward diseases of old age and the ageing person’s response to illness can be investigated in paintings. The works selected are of different genres and date from different stages of Rembrandt’s own life, one from his youth and one from his old...

Paul Klee was a major contributor to the development of modern European art. An ethnic German (although born in Switzerland) and a German citizen, he was persecuted by the Nazi government on political rather than racial grounds because of his allegedly "degenerate" artistic style. Dismissed from his teaching position, he emigrated to Switzerland in...

The history of medicine has been an intriguing topic for both authors. The modern relevance of past discoveries led both authors to take a closer look at the lives and contributions of persecuted physicians. The Jewish physicians who died in the Holocaust stand out as a stark example of those who merit being remembered. Many made important contribu...

Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883-1970; not to be confused with the Zionist of the same name) was a member of an illustrious Jewish family, known for some five centuries. From humble beginnings, the family became prominent in the world for their contributions to all aspects of society. The son of a German mother and a Jewish (converted) father, Otto H. W...

The German-Swiss modernist painter Paul Klee (1879-1940) suffered in the final years of his life from a severe illness, diagnosed in 1936 as scleroderma, later renamed SSc. New classification criteria for this disease issued in 2013 now allow for a diagnosis to be confirmed. Important for this process, however, is the question of whether or not Kle...

The diagnosis of Fixed Sagittal Imbalance (FSI), previously known as Flat Back Syndrome, requires the measurement of spinal curvatures on a lateral radiograph in the standing position (C7-S1). It can be difficult to position a spastic patient, sometimes repeated exposure are required, at separate thoracic and lumbar levels, increasing the radiation...

The mystery behind the behavior of infamous personalities leaves many open questions, particularly when related to the practice of medicine. This paper takes a brief look at two Jewish physicians who played memorable roles in the life of Adolf Hitler.

Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the "Final solution of the Jewish problem," had a meteoric career in the SS. He organized the Wannsee Conference and created the SS killing squads. Under his leadership as Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, the suppression of the Czech community was brutal. An attempt on his life in Prague was unsuccessfu...

The fetal "programming of adult diseases" has been previously reviewed. The descriptions were comprehensive, dealing with the effects of nutritional deprivation on the development of adult metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. During the past decade, research into this "programming" also expanded to the development of osteoporosis. The present rev...

Reconstructing a medical condition which was existent centuries ago is limited by the lack of contemporaneous evidence-based descriptions in the accounts given by physicians and other observers. Despite these limitations modern paleopathological evidence, supplemented by techniques of historical investigation, have led to the conclusion that males...

On the morning of November 7, 1938 vom Rath, a diplomat at the German embassy in Paris, was shot by Herschel Grynzspan, a Jewish teenager. Of the 5 shots fired, 2 hit vom Rath, one in the right shoulder and one in the abdomen. He was rushed to Alma Women's Hospital near the embassy, where emergency surgery was undertaken. Two days later his conditi...

Medicine in the Middle Ages was, and ever since remained, one of the main preoccupations of the professionally restricted Jews. One of the medical dynasties on the Iberian Peninsula was the Bueno (Bonus) family. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and their spread in Europe, these Iberian physicians became successful everywhere-just as t...

The objective of this study was to provide evidence for the association of early life nutritional deprivation and adult osteoporosis, in order to suggest that a history of such deprivation may be an indicator of increased risk of osteoporosis in later life. The 'fetal programming' of a range of metabolic and cardiovascular disorders in adults was f...

The Warsaw Ghetto, in existence from 1940 to 1943, was the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. The 400,000-500,000 Jews incarcerated within its walls were deprived not only of food and medicine but also of education. Nonetheless, Jewish physicians served the community as befits their profession, and against all odds obtained permission to condu...

To offer a second opinion on the recently published retrospective diagnosis of Cardinal Carlo de' Medici (1596-1666), a prominent member of the grand ducal family then ruling Tuscany. Retrospective diagnosis of historical figures is difficult and at times controversial, even with modern technology. It is based on contemporaneous medical description...

The Medici family ruled Florence for most of the period from the 1430s to the 1730s, with the senior (primogenito) branch predominating until the line ended in the 1530s and the cadet (secondogenito) branch predominating thereafter. Recent studies have identified a familial syndrome consisting of cutaneous symptoms, peripheral arthropathy and spina...

Joint diseases in antiquity and the Renaissance were generally known by the all-encompassing term, gout (podagra or gotta). Only in later centuries was there a differentiation in the types of joint diseases, distinguishing gout in the modern sense from other arthritic and rheumatic disorders. The present article illustrates one pictorial representa...

This medical history essay claims that a medical fraud was committed by the authorities and was used as a pretext for the November 1938 anti-jewish Kristallnacht pogrom throughout the Third Reich. The suggested conspiracy covered up the real cause of death of the German Embassy's secretary in Paris. Baron Ernst vom Rath had been shot by a Jewish te...

The identity of the young man in Jacopo Pontormo's Portrait of a Halberdier has long been disputed by art historians. Two probable candidates have been identified: Francesco Guardi, a Florentine nobleman, and Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence from 1537 and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569. The present study is intended to help resolve this contr...

The depiction of St Joseph with a foot deformity is rare in Italian Renaissance art. During the period 1475-1525, however, it appears in paintings by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Raphael Sanzio, and Giulio Romano. Given the intensification of the cult of St Joseph in Italy during this half century, and the similar representation of his deformity i...

Case report. To report a previously undescribed association between complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) and surgery for cervical disc protrusion. Although CRPS has been associated with disc protrusion and lumbar spine surgery, there is no record in the literature of a similar association with cervical disc protrusion. Description of a clinical ca...

The historical significance of the Medici family of Florence is widely recognised, but the diseases which afflicted leading members of this family have only been scientifically studied in recent decades. Paleopathological findings on exhumed skeletons, supplemented by medical descriptions in historical documents, have permitted a retrospective diag...

Reviewing recent pages on social studies of science, the authors found several articles dealing with Dr. Ludwik Fleck's philosophical work. Fleck's interest was even more intensive in medical science. Apart from the typhus serology; he worked extensively in the field of microbiology and described the "Leukergy" phenomenon. A modest contribution was...

A better understanding of the relationship between medicine and art could have significant implications for the role of the creative arts in medical education. This study seeks to contribute to that understanding by providing an overview of the involvement of medical practitioners in artistic creation from the Renaissance to the present--based on h...

The Medici family was prominent in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Their contributions to political, economic, and artistic life have remained persistent preoccupations for historians. The medical history of this family, however, was relatively neglected prior to the middle of the twentieth century, probably due to the scarci...

This article considers three examples of medical research undertaken during the Second World War by members of captive populations. The populations - located in the Warsaw ghetto, the Vapniarca concentration camp in Transnistria, Ukraine; and the Changi military prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore - were all subject to severe malnourishment that beca...

Prior to about 1500 most depictions of the Last Supper in Western art showed unleavened bread on the table, but since then leavened bread has usually been shown. This change involved the abandonment of what was understood at the time to be a historically-accurate representation of the Last Supper, in favor of a historically-inaccurate one. The pres...

Deciphering the secret language of painters became a discipline into which Art historians have branched ever since the Renaissance. Various aspects of paintings and sculptures were decoded in this process. This decoding system remains however incomplete without interpreting also the medical conditions that appear in the painted subjects. History of...

Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) is remembered today for his contributions to literature and aesthetic theory-it is less well known that his first career was in medicine (an army appointment). Scholars have generally held that his primary interest lay in psychology and the psychological aspects of medicine, and that his commitment to...

The great Renaissance scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam was a pioneering advocate of the importance of medicine for social as well as individual welfare. Erasmus' "Oration in praise of the art of medicine" (1518) illustrates his literary approach to this topic. Although the original version of his text did not address the state's role in promoting the h...

Desiderius Erasmus set out his views on medical ethics just over 500 years ago. Applying the characteristic approach of Renaissance Humanism, he drew upon a variety of classical sources to develop his own account of medical obligation. Of particular interest is Erasmus's attention to the patient's duties as well as the physician's. By treating this...

Lumbar disc disease is reviewed from a surgical viewpoint. Pathological changes and related mechanisms of nociception are depicted in two main categories, termed external disc disease and internal disc disease. Pertinent diagnostic modalities are specified, together with an outline of the results that may be expected from each. Clinical syndromes o...

An aggressive and recurrent pigmented villonodular synovitis of the knee occurred in a 47-year-old man. Magnetic resonance imaging was an excellent noninvasive diagnostic aid that completely outlined the extent of the synovitis and correlated well with surgical findings.

A retrospective study on the value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in replacing contrast studies of the lumbar spine has been undertaken. Studying pre- and postoperative conditions, the authors attempted to answer the question, Will MRI replace myelography? In this retrospective study, comparison is made in 20 patients between MRI and myelograp...

The value of M.R.I. in diagnosing spinal disorders has been tested in a series of 100 patients. C.T., myelography, discography and the operative findings are compared with the M.R.I. findings. The results indicate that M.R.I. is a valuable diagnostic investigation.

A group of 29 patients with symptomatic Paget's disease of bone was studied. Certain clinical aspects have been found to be changing, relating to ethnic and family incidence, lumbar stenosis, and neoplastic association.

Magnetic resonance imaging is a new diagnostic procedure which may be applied to diseases of the lumbar spine and its contents. The technique is non-invasive and does not use ionizing radiation; it also has better contrast resolution than do other methods that are available. This article explores the application of the technique to postoperative co...

The theory of Spinal Reserve Capacity (SRC) a Computerised Tomography technique, proving symptomatic spinal stenosis, has been applied to industrial accident patients with pre-existent developmental canal narrowing. In five cases, a mild disc bulge or protrusion into the lumbar canal produced obliteration of the intracanalar space, necessary for th...

The lumbar syndrome of Paget's disease is classified according to its severity, clinical findings, biochemical factors, and radiological pattern. Pagetoid spinal stenoses may occur in three stages as a progressive clinical syndrome. Several diagnostic procedures, including computerized tomography, (CT) are analyzed to introduce the concept of Spina...

In spinal surgery, free fat grafts can be placed to limit the ingrowth postlaminectomy fibrous tissue. A specimen of free fat graft recovered from the spinal canal of a patient after 40 months showed histological evidence of revascularization. The reparative, dense fibrosis surrounding the laminectomy site had not penetrated into the spinal canal.