"The books and the night", neurological perspective on Jorge Luis Borges' blindness

The works of Argentinian scholar Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) have captivated physicians. An assiduous reader, he was given, with magnificent irony, "books and the night". Borges suffered from chronic and irreversible blindness, which influenced much of his work and has been the subject of different literary and diagnostic analyses from the ophthalmological point of view. However, the characteristics of his visual impairment have escaped the neurological approach, which is why we reviewed his work looking for data suggesting a concomitant brain injury. On his autobiography, he recounts how, during an episode of septicemia, he suffered hallucinations and loss of speech; in addition, in some poems and essays he describes data that suggest "phantom chromatopsia", a lesion of cortical origin. After that accident, Borges survived with a radical change in literary style. Although a precise diagnosis is impossible, his literary work allows recognizing some elements in favor of concomitant brain involvement.

Oscar Castro Zúñiga: el poeta vencido por la tuberculosis / Oscar Castro Zúñiga, the poet who succumbed to tuberculosis

The life of the renowned Chilean writer, Oscar Castro Zúñiga, was interrupted early, when he was 37 years old. He acquired tuberculosis during the epidemic in our country between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. He developed the disease during a crucial stage in terms of diagnosis and treatment, coinciding with the end of the sanatorium stage and the first chemotherapeutic attempts. The symptoms and treatments of the disease in that age are described analyzing the letters, both written by himself and by people close to him and the biographies published during the historical and personal context of the artist.

Literatura, história e farmácia: um diálogo possível / Literature, history and pharmacy: a possible dialogue

No Centro de Memória da Faculdade de Farmácia da UFMG encontram-se documentos relativos à passagem de Carlos Drummond de Andrade pela instituição, fato que levou à reflexão sobre a presença da farmácia e do farmacêutico na literatura. Por meio de diálogo interdisciplinar e de pesquisa sobre elementos que comprovassem essa presença, sua efetiva participação e presença na literatura, buscou-se historicizar essa vinculação não só do poeta de Itabira, mas de outros homens de letras, sendo profissionais farmacêuticos ou inspirados por eles. Objetivou-se, igualmente, apontar alguns elementos que fundamentem e demonstrem a importância desse profissional na sociedade brasileira do final do século XIX e primeira metade do XX.

In the Memory Center of the Pharmacy School of UFMG there are documents relating to the passage of Carlos Drummond de Andrade through the institution, a fact that has led to reflection on the presence of the pharmacy and the pharmaceutical expert in literature. By means of interdisciplinary dialogue and research into elements that prove this presence, active participation and presence in the literature, an attempt was made to historicize these ties, not only of the poet from Itabira, but other men of letters, be they pharmaceutical professionals or people inspired by them. The objective was also to highlight some evidence that supports and demonstrates the importance of this professional in Brazilian society of the late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century.

Neruda y la resistencia a los antibióticos / Neruda and antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobial resistance has been a problem in medicine, since their incorporation to clinical practice. Numerous papers have been written on the subject. The analysis of two poems by Pablo Neruda "How much does a man live" and "Larynx", included in the volume "Estravagario" and published for the first time in 1957 and 1958, give us an incredible revelation about the concept of resistance. In these poems aureomycin, the first antimicrobial of the family of tetracycline’s, was included as a poetic figure and the therapeutic action of antimicrobials was described. "Never so much bugs died I tons of them fell I but the few that remained olive I manifested their perversity". These writings incorporated novel concepts, even for physicians of that time and described the closeness of death that a patient may perceive during the course of a given disease. The capacity of Pablo Neruda to extract the essence of situations and to anticipate to conditions that only years later became clinically relevant problems, is noteworthy.

La parádola de los seis ciegos y el elefante indostano o comprendiendo la esencia de la medicina interna / The fable of the six blind men and the elephant from indostan or understanding the internal medicine essence

Existe una antigua fábula popularizada en un poema escrito por el poema norteamericano John G Saxe en 1860. En él se demuestra como podemos estar equivocados si sustentamos nuestras opiniones con base a una insuficiente evidencia obtenida a través de un inadecuado estudio. Cada uno de los seis ciegos del poema se acercó al elefante para investigar cómo era pero tomando solo una parte aislada del animal. Cada uno se hizo de una solida pero errónea opinión de lo que realmente era un elefante. Discutieron entre sí defendiendo sus impresiones y como Saxe escribiera, "Los ciegos disputan y se querellan: cada uno está seguro de haber hecho bien su prueba...¡Cada uno tiene un poco de razón...y todos están equivocados!". El autor asimila al elefante a un paciente cuya queja es interpretada de manera diferente al ser analizada a través del juicio prejuiciado de diversos especialistas al interpretar fragmentos inconexos del todo indivisible que es el ser humano

There is old Indian fable made popular in a poem written by John G. Saxe in 1860. It demonstrates how we can be so very wrong by basing our opinions on insufficient evidence gained through inadequate studies. Each of the six blind men in the poem walked up to an imposing elephant to investigate what it investigate what it was-but each touched only one part of the animal. Each man had a faulty yet strong opinion of what an elephant was really like and disputed the others with great vigor. As Saxe wrote, "through each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong! "The author compares the elephant to a patient whose complaint is interpreted differently when analyzed through the prejudiced judgment of various specialist who interpret unconnected fragments of the fully indivisible human being

Biography of Sŏdhala and his contribution to Ayurvĕda.

Sŏdhala was a scholar of Ayurvĕda as well as săhitya, Jyotisya, Vyakaraņa and also a good poet who belongs to Gujarat. Sŏdhala contributed two important works to Ayurvĕda literature namely 1. Sŏdhbala nighaņţu, 2. Gadanigraha. Sŏdhala nighaņţu consists of two parts and contains about 2,050 (790+1,260) verses. The section on synonyms, the Nămasangraha, and the other one is on properties and actions of drugs, the Guņasangraha. The arrangement of the material constitutes an unprecedented innovation in the literature of Nighaņţu (Ayurvĕda drug's lexicons or dictionaries). The Gadanigraha is composed of two distinct parts and contains about 10,054 (2,700+7,354) verses. The first part is a collection of formulae arranged according to the several types of pharmaceutical preparations and the second one is a comprehensive text dealing with both Nidăna and cikitsă, arranged as for the Aşţăngas (8 major divisions) of Ayurvĕda. The work seems to be later than Sŏdhalanighaņţu because most of the drugs mentioned in this work are not found in the Sŏdhalanighaņţu. The diseases are arranged in systematically, which is a new feature and their order is differ from Mădhavanidăna. From the available evidences we can assume that Sŏdhala might be belongs to 1200 A.D. The contributions of Sŏdhala are noteworthy and they are important landmark works in history of Ayurvĕda.