Called “the royal disease”, hemophilia is widely documented in the courts of European countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And, if you follow some conspiracy theories, is even linked to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The story goes as follows: Queen Victoria herself was a carrier of the disease, caused by genetic mutation and carried through the female…
In the middle of the last century sociologist Erving Goffman came up with the theory of social performativity - the concept that, as Shakespeare said some four centuries prior, we are all actors and the world is our stage. We perform a variety of roles, claims Goffman, in our day-to-day lives: the roles of a parent, a student, an employee,…
“The real question, Eleanor, is what do we owe to each other.”, says a character from a popular sitcom, dealing with the world of ethics. We should think about this quote quite a lot, especially recently with World Health Day approaching and this year’s theme being “Health for all”. We live in times when we largely recognize the value of…
It’s the 70th World Health Day, which also happens to be the World Health Organisation’s 70th anniversary. Why? Because on the 7th of April 1948 after years of lobbying United Nations delegates finally got a resolution to pass calling for an international health organization to be created. However, the word “international” was intentionally changed, hence why we call it the…
When talking about the history of clinical trials one name always pops up - that of James Lind who conducted the famous scurvy trial in 1747. When we were talking about how it all started with the FindMeCure team, we all knew about James Lind but were curious to find out more - to take a look beyond the mythologized…
Ever since Dostoevsky’s Prince Mishkin and even before him epileptic seizures have been wildly misunderstood. Because of the number of strange sensations they come with and the physical reactions they induce, seizures cannot go unnoticed in societal settings and have been attached to a variety of interpretations throughout cultures - from demonic possessions and traces of witchcraft to signs of…
