scholarly journals Surgery for Gynecomastia in the Islamic Golden Age: Al-Tasrif of Al-Zahrawi (936–1013 AD)

ISRN Surgery ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Hadi Chavoushi ◽  
Kamyar Ghabili ◽  
Abdolhassan Kazemi ◽  
Arash Aslanabadi ◽  
Sarah Babapour ◽  
...  

The rise of European science during the Renaissance is greatly indebted to the flourishing of the sciences during the Islamic Golden Age. However, some believe that medieval Islamic physicians and in particular surgeons had been merely a medium for Greco-Roman ideas. Contrarily, in some medieval Islamic medical books, such as Al-Tasrif of Al-Zahrawi (936–1013), the surgical instructions represent a change in the usual techniques or are accompanied by a case history, implying that the procedure was actually undertaken. Along with the hundreds of chapters on different diseases and related medical and surgical treatments, Al-Tasrif includes a chapter on surgical techniques for gynecomastia. The present paper is a review of the description of the surgical management of gynecomastia by Al-Zahrawi as well as that of the ancient Greek, medieval, and modern medicine. Although Al-Zahrawi seemed to base his descriptions of surgery for gynecomastia upon those of Paulus of Aegina, his modification of the procedure and application of the medicinal substances might be indicative of Al-Zahrawi’s own practice of the procedure. Al-Zahrawi’s surgical procedures remained unchanged for many centuries thenceforward until the technological evolution in the recent centuries.

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-378
Author(s):  
Clint Burnett

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey P. Bishop

Technology tends toward perpetual innovation. Technology, enabled by both political and economic structures, propels society forward in a kind of technological evolution. The moment a novel piece of technology is in place, immediately innovations are attempted in a process of unending betterment. Bernard Stiegler suggests that, contra Heidegger, it is not being-toward-death that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. Rather, it is technological innovation that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. In fact, for Stiegler, human evolution has always been part of technological evolution. While one can quibble with the notion of human-technology co-evolution, there is something to be said for the way in which human perception of time, of ageing, and of death seems to be judged against the horizon of perpetual evolution of technological innovation. In this technological imaginary, of which modern medicine is constituent, ageing and death seemingly may be infinitely deferred, and it is this innovating deferral that shapes the contemporary social imaginary around ageing and death in modern medicine. Yet, the reality of living (which is to say ageing) and dying always manifests itself differently than the scripts given to us by the technological imaginary with its myth of endless innovation. In fact, I shall argue that, where the Church created an ars moriendi, the technological imaginary gives us an ars ad mortem when it becomes clear that ageing and death cannot be infinitely deferred. And further, I shall argue that the Church must revivify its ars vivendi—that is to say, its liturgies, its arts, its technics—as a counter narrative to the myth of perpetual innovation that shapes the technological imaginary.


2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Meister

Over the last decade, significant advances have been made in the study and understanding of shoulder mechanics. Much of this may be attributed to the use of more sophisticated technology to improve our ability to assess the shoulder in real-time athletics. As a consequence of these advances, our understanding of the pathophysiology of injury has also increased. Our manual examination skills have improved and our noninvasive diagnostic techniques have advanced greatly. New insight into forces at play during actions as complex as the throwing motion has allowed us to develop better protocols for the prevention and treatment of the most common injuries. Additionally, paralleling improvements in the understanding of shoulder kinematics and the pathophysiology of injury, advances in surgical techniques, particularly arthroscopy, have aided in the diagnosis of and the development of less invasive surgical treatments for injuries that do not respond to nonoperative measures. Undoubtedly, an up-to-date understanding of the developments in shoulder biomechanics, pathophysiology of injury, diagnostic techniques, and surgical management is necessary for the clinician who wishes to continue to apply proper skills in the sports medicine setting.


Author(s):  
Emma Scioli

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.


Author(s):  
Ryan Platte

In the first of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Platte reveals how Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which proclaims its debt to Homer’s Odyssey in the opening credits, also re-enacts Homeric epic’s creation of a golden age. Platte focuses on the role of song in generating ancient and modern societies’ gilded memories of the past, including the nostalgia-laden misremembering of the Depression-era American South in which the film is set. Platte emphasizes how technological change affected the American folk-song tradition through recording – a phenomenon similar to that which changed Greek song culture into “Homeric” epic. By focusing on a moment of epochal change, the filmmakers undercut the notion that folk music is a simple and genuine artefact of the past. Instead, invoking nostalgia through song exposes the artificiality of the traffic in nostalgia, which has shaped attitudes toward the ancient Greek and modern American pasts. Through the protagonist’s encounter with two Homer avatars, the Coens dramatize both the process of nostalgia-creation for such a golden age and the rejection of attempts to politically weaponize it: in this case, by obscuring racism in romantic depictions of the “Old South.”


Author(s):  
Meredith E. Safran

This volume introduction analyzes a pervasive fantasy in American popular media: the desire to escape an “iron age” deemed materially and morally degraded in comparison with an idealized lost world that people hope somehow to recover. This idealized “golden age” is viewed with the painful longing of nostalgia and the sorrow of belatedness from the degraded “iron age” of the viewer’s present time, often accompanied by inquiry into how and why golden conditions no longer obtain. Self-proclaimed heirs to classical antiquity’s cultural patrimony adopted this myth with alacrity, and its deployment can be traced continuously throughout the classical tradition, including in popular media not conventionally associated with classicism. The introduction reviews key strands of golden-age discourse in ancient Greek and Roman texts, including views on human-divine relations, gender relations, and technological innovations; and modern receptions of historical societies as golden ages to be emulated, especially Periclean Athens, Thermopylae-era Sparta, and Augustan Rome. Case studies include the Vergilian concept of “Arcadia” as deployed in the sci-fi television series The 100 and “golden age thinking” as a psychological malady in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.


Author(s):  
Kirsten Day

As the film that introduced a new psychological complexity to the genre while establishing John Wayne as a serious actor rather than merely a star, Howard Hawks’s 1948 Red River is often considered the first Golden Age Western. After brief discussion of its literary roots and the circumstances surrounding its production, release, and reception, this chapter connects this film to the broader epic tradition before turning to specific parallels with the three canonical Greco-Roman epics, first, arguing that much like Homer’s Iliad, Red River positions Wayne’s Tom Dunson as an Achilles figure – a man consumed by deadly rage provoked by a slight to his honor. Next, expanding on Gerald Mast’s identification of the film as an Odyssey, this chapter shows that in both works, a morally ambiguous hero embarks upon a quest to preserve his home, and in both, the father-son relationship is central, along with related issues of succession, status, authority, and identity. Finally, Red River’s kinship with Virgil’s Aeneid is discussed: both highlight the painful sacrifices inherent in the heroic work of nation-building – difficulties symbolized in both cases by the sacrifice of women and the hero’s compromised humanity – emphasizing the cost of empire even while promoting its glories.


Author(s):  
John L. Allen

In Catholic argot, the various rites and rituals of the Church are known as “liturgies,” from the ancient Greek term leitourgia, meaning “work,” referring to the public work of the state done on behalf of the people. The term was used in Greco-Roman...


Author(s):  
Michael E. Pregill

This chapter examines the earliest traditions of interpretation of the Golden Calf narrative, found in Jewish literature of the Greco-Roman period; these early retellings of the narrative are deeply colored by apologetic concerns. Major shifts in interpretation can be charted over the course of a few short centuries during this era due to rapid changes in the cultural and religious landscape. While the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, is frank regarding the Israelites’ sin of idolatry, the versions of the Golden Calf episode found in Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus are concerned to minimize the impact of attacks on the Jewish community and its traditions from gentile outsiders, and so represent the story in ways intended to mitigate the impression of Israel’s idolatry. Early rabbinic exegetes, in contrast, are relatively candid about Israel’s sin with the Calf. However, the emergence of the Christian movement, which entailed the revision of numerous biblical stories, including new understandings of the Calf narrative, induced rabbinic exegetes to approach the Calf narrative with a new sense of circumspection and caution in order to counter rival interpretations that were potentially harmful to the reputation and self-conception of the Jewish community.


ESC CardioMed ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1733-1736
Author(s):  
Jean-François Obadia ◽  
Benoit Cosset ◽  
Matteo Pozzi

The clinical picture of infective endocarditis is extremely variable and recently updated European guidelines must face this practical issue. The decision-making algorithm might be driven by the patient’s characteristics with a collaborative approach—the ‘endocarditis team’—in order to find the best antibiotic and surgical treatments.


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