The son of a village farrier near Tours, Velpeau rose from humble beginnings to become by dint of intelligence, hard work, and determination the leading surgeon of his day in Paris. As professor of clinical surgery in the university he was an admired and respected teacher. His writings covered most aspects of medicine, surgery, and obstetrics.

You are asked to see a 37-year-old male carpenter who was noted to be anemic and mildly thrombocytopenic during a routine physical examination. The patient has been married for 11 years and has a 5-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter. He reports that he has been in good health but has noted increasing fatigue over the past 2 months. Two weeks ago, he and his son had viral gastroenteritis th...

Motivation has been traditionally defined as energy (e.g., running speed) and direction (e.g., toward food), and the determinants of motivation as need (e.g., for food), expectation (e.g., cognitive map of the maze), and incentive value (e.g., quality of the food). When motivation toward attaining a desired future meets resistance or conflict, self-regulation becomes relevant. The use of effect...

Wildberger became a renowned local figure and received an honorary medical doctorate from Jena and many foreign honours. In later life he moved his institute to Forchheim, where he had the assistance of his medically-qualified son before the latter emigrated to America. His writings on the proper training of orthopaedic surgeons, with their insistence on early specialist education in methods an...

Three years ago, John Schwartz, a national correspondent at The New York Times, got the call that every parent hopes never to receive: his 13-year-old son, Joe, was in the hospital following a failed suicide attempt. After mustering the courage to come out to his classmates, Joe’s disclosure --delivered in a tirade about homophobic attitudes --was greeted with dismay and confusion by his fellow...

Darwin's autobiography was never meant quite as such: he wanted to leave some thoughts for his children and grandchildren about his views on his life and how he worked. The first edition did not appear until forty years after his death and was the work of his son, Francis, who edited and compiled the material left to him and his siblings. Darwin claims he was prompted to pen some thoughts becau...

Wildberger became a renowned local figure and received an honorary medical doctorate from Jena and many foreign honours. In later life he moved his institute to Forchheim, where he had the assistance of his medically-qualified son before the latter emigrated to America. His writings on the proper training of orthopaedic surgeons, with their insistence on early specialist education in methods an...

Aniridia is a congenital panocular disorder caused by the mutations of the paired box gene-6 (PAX6). To investigate the clinical characterization and the underlying genetic defect in a Chinese family with aniridia and other ocular abnormalities, we recruited the family members who underwent ophthalmic examination. Two patients in this family, the proband and his affected son, both have bilatera...