Determination of Optimal Phage Load and Administration Time for Antibacterial Treatment.

Using phages as antibacterials is becoming a customary practice in Western countries. Nonetheless, successful treatments must consider the growth rate of the bacterial host and the degradation of the virions. Therefore, successful treatments require administering the right amount of phage (viral load, Vφ) at the right moment (administration time, Tφ).

Modulation of the replication of positive-sense RNA viruses by the natural plant metabolite xanthohumol and its derivatives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of identifying new potent antiviral agents. Nutrients as well as plant-derived substances are promising candidates because they are usually well tolerated by the human body and readily available in nature, and consequently mostly cheap to produce. A variety of antiviral effects have recently been described for the hop chalcone xanthohumol (XN), and to a lesser extent for its derivatives, making these hop compounds particularly attractive for further investigation.

Surgeon Henry Tonks and the blur of artistry.

The professional career of 20th Century British surgeon and artist Henry Tonks provides a unique perspective into the complex balance of technique, creativity, and empathy necessary to heal both body and soul. For Tonks, the skills of surgery did not suffice to address his intense emotional attachment to his suffering patients. For that reason, he turned to painting as an expression of deeper efforts to demonstrate human suffering to which he was so sensitive and which engulfed him at times in the tragedies of mankind.

Korea and the Bloodstained Path to Pusan: A Medical Calamity of Retreat and the Redemptive Genesis of MASH.

June of 1950 found the US forces poorly prepared to stop North Korean forces rolling into South Korea. First encounters scattered American soldiers and presented unique challenges for care of the casualties; battalion doctors and medics hustled the wounded along, sometimes themselves trapped, captured, or killed. Finally, within the Pusan perimeter American and South Korean resistance stiffened.

Alexis Carrel and His Voyage of Discovery: Miracles and the Spirituality of Healing.

In the era of positivism and anticlericalism of France's Belle Époque, scientist Alexis Carrel stood in stark contrast as one preoccupied with his faith and its relation to scientific scrutiny. Despite his early adult agnosticism, he sought proof of the divine and chose verification of the miraculous cures reported from the shrine at Lourdes, France. It so happened that on his first visit there, he encountered a truly remarkable "cure" of a young woman in the terminal stages of tubercular peritonitis.