Abraham Nussbaum

Physician, Teacher, Writer


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  • The Medical Imagination, Sari Altschuler

    The Medical Imagination, Sari Altschuler

    Genre is a strategy, Altschuler reminds us, and medicine has negotiated epistemic crises with a range of genres. Holmes made sense of anesthesia by writing novels. Rush imagined the sympathetic system as the republic. Poe negotiated epidemics with the Gothic. Altschuler reminds that we praise empiricism, but neglect the role…

  • Twice As Hard, Jasmine Brown

    Twice As Hard, Jasmine Brown

    Professionalization includes and excludes. The doors to the house of medicine for Black physicians, especially Black women, were barred during the Progressive Era. Remarkably, a few pioneers made their way to the bedside of patients despite many obstacles. Brown builds each chapter around the story of one of these pioneers.…

  • Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev

    Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev

    Inside today’s academic medical centers, the talk is about generational differences. Work-life balance or fiduciary responsibility. Medicine is a job or a calling. Physicians should band together as union members or in professional guilds. Trainees should have stricter duty hours or live within the hospital. The crisis in medical education…