History
Terra Sigillata
Category archives for History
Sir John Crofton, TB combination therapy pioneer – a long and admirable life
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on November 20, 2009 Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97. Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills…
A black woman, a white boy, and a PhD
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on November 13, 2009 Twenty years ago this morning, I had to defend a body of work that contained this paragraph on page 24: HeLa cells are a human cervical carcinoma cell line having a doubling time of 24 hr and were obtained from Dr. Bert Flanegan, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Florida. HeLa cells were maintained…
On the Origin of Witches, Broomsticks, and Flying
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on October 31, 2009 This post appeared here originally on 31 October 2007 Have you ever wondered, perhaps on 31 October, why witches are depicted as riding brooms? The answer is alluded to by Karmen Franklin at Chaotic Utopia in her post as to why witches need to know their plant biology. The excerpts I’m about to give you…
Excellent neuroscience grad student blogger breaks my writer’s block with her flippant comment about a cytochrome P450
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on October 18, 2009 The always-outstanding neuroblogger, SciCurious, put up an excellent post overnight on a presentation she saw at the current Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in Chicago. Therein, she wrote about a poster presentation she saw on the relationship between iron, cholesterol, and Alzheimer’s disease. All was quite well until near the end of…
Anthony DeCurtis, U2 conference keynote speaker, in NYTimes on Summer of 1969 Peace, Love, and Charlie Manson
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on August 2, 2009 Just a quick note this morning as I picked up the dead-tree version of The New York Times this morning in the PharmDriveway. For some reason, I recognized the name of Anthony DeCurtis in the byline of this short essay on the Manson family Tate-LaBianca murders marking the demise of the 1960s counterculture movement. I…
Pediatric cancer patient checks in at age 55; beneficiary of Dr Charlotte Tan’s actinomycin D work
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on June 30, 2009 I love it when new readers stumble upon old posts. Such was the case when I received the following delightful comment from Seattle-based psychologist, Dr Gary Grenell, on my April 2008 post about the passing of Dr Charlotte Tan, a pediatric cancer chemotherapy pioneer: I was probably in one of her earliest actionmycin-D trial groups…
Historic images coming to iPhone on DukeMobile 1.1
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on June 17, 2009 Seen yesterday in the local AP feed: Looks like a great partnership to access historic images on the iPhone or iTouch to satisfy pretty much any scholar or history enthusiast: Duke and Apple to join forces DURHAM — Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries to view collections of historic…
Tom Levenson Fan Boi Day: Hear Him With Ira Flatow On ScienceFriday
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on June 5, 2009 Just a quick note to dial up Ira Flatow’s Science Friday show on NPR today at 3 pm EDT. Supporting information and the archived show can be found here. Guy-who-I-would-kill-to-be, Tom Levenson, will be on with Ira to speak about his new book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest…
Goodbye, Ski Train???
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on May 13, 2009 Ski Train? Wasn’t that the title of a Cat Stevens song? I was just getting around to putting up a science post when I just received a Tweet from my Rocky Mountain peeps at Denver’s Westword magazine, the indy pub of the Queen City of the Plains. (Actually, this is kind of a science post…
Ernie Barnes 1938-2009; Artist and NFL Football Great
Posted by Abel Pharmboy on April 29, 2009 Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70. From the biography at Mr Barnes’ website: