Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz

The Greek-Roman physician Galen, in the second century, gave the name of labyrinth to the inner ear, in view of the difficulties he had in trying to understand its complicated anatomy. It reminded him of the Greek mythology story of the Cretan king Minos, who ordered the architect Dedalus to build a very complex structure where people got lost and could not find their way out. Even Dedalus, imprisoned in the labyrinth when he finished building it, could not escape. The great anatomists gradually deciphered the enigmas of the labyrinth. The first complete description, however, had to wait for the Swedish histologist Gustav Retzius (1842-1919), who did a fantastic job of describing and drawing the inner ear, being successful in dealing with the great difficulties of tissue fixation in that time. But even Retzius believed that the semicircular canals, the saccule and the utricle were parts of the auditory system. Jean-Pierre-Marie Flourens was one of the first neurophysiologists, t...

I still remember my first Thanksgiving dinner. It was in 1958, the year in which I arrived in Saint Louis for my otological training. I was invited by Dr. Walter Covell, my teacher of otolaryngological anatomy, who would later become my adviser when I applied for my Master’s degree. I had no idea of what was the Thanksgiving day. Nowadays many people in Brazil commemorate it, but at that time it was totally unknown to me. And of course I tried to find out what it was all about. I know that there are many doubts concerning the historical veracity of the legend, but the attempts to modify it are equally difficult to prove and are definitely less satisfying to our souls than the original one. It all began with a harvest. Harvest festivals are not uncommon, but they happen immediately after the harvest. This one is different. We celebrate one specific occasion that happened a long time ago.  It seems that the Pilgrims had had some bad harvests. And since they were attemptin...

In 2008 I received a letter from Prof. Nina Azari, inviting me to collaborate on a project that she had just devised. I do not know her and I have no idea why she chose me as one of the many persons that she invited to join her project. At that time Dr. Azari was working at the Department of Psychology of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She is now a part of the science faculty of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is a specialist in cognitive neuroscience and psychology of religion. She uses psychological methods and medical imaging technology to study things like religious experiences, consciousness, belief and perception in her volunteer subjects. In one of her best known studies she used positron emission tomography (PET-Scan) to measure brain activity in six fundamentalist Christians and six non-religious controls.  Each subject had go through six different situations: 1 - stay resting for a few minutes; 2- read the first verse of the 23rd p...

I have just finished reading a book called "Zealot," by Reza Aslan. Mortuary mask of Jesus, drawn by my uncle Francisco Mangabeira Albernaz Dr. Aslan is associate professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside. He was born in Iran and is a Muslim. And his book is about Jesus. It is the result of twenty years of research on the New Testament and the beginnings of Christianity conducted at the University of Santa Clara, Harvard University and University of California Santa Barbara. In my book Em busca de Deus (In search of God) I wrote a chapter about Jesus. It caused me a good deal of satisfaction to see that Aslan's opinions are the same as mine. But there is no question that his research was much more thorough than mine. And his book is definitely worth reading. I do not regard Jesus as God, I regard him as a man. An extraordinary man for whom I have an enormous admiration. As a God, his intrinsic qualities can be taken for granted. ...

This year I was invited to give a talk on the first day of the Jewish New Year. New years, whether Jewish, or Christian, or Zoroastrian, to mention the few that I observe, are always linked to resolutions. We always try to idealize things that we should but often fail to accomplish in the new year.  One of the characteristics of the Jewish New Year is the blowing of the shofar. This is a primitive musical instrument, made of a sheep’s ram. When God gave us the Bible at Mount Sinai the blast of the shofar was heard.  My speech also mentions Hasidism, a 18th century Jewish movement whose leader was Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, who became known as the Baal Shem Tov – the Lord of the Good Name. He was a charismatic leader that used to say that we should always be close to God, not only in moments of affliction, but also when we are cheerful and happy. Rabbi Rami Shapiro is, to me, a neo-hasid. He is an important contemporary intellectual who wrote many books. I quote her...

Marcus Vinitius da Cruz e Mello Moraes was a poet, a diplomat, a composer of songs and a writer of lyrics. His presence in Brazil’s musical scenery was outstanding, as was that of his partners Antonio Carlos Jobim, Baden Powell, Edu Lobo, Carlos Lyra, Toquinho and several others. Vinicius de Moraes - (Ricardo Alfieri, via Wikimedia Commons) This is not a biography of Vinicius, which can be easily found. It is rather a collection of things that happened in his life and that I can assure you are all true – either I saw them happen or I was told them by close personal friends. José Marques da Costa (Zequinha) was one of Vinicius’ very special friends; whenever he came to São Paulo he would stay at Zequinha’s house. Both Zequinha and his wife Regina were also very special friends of my wife and I. Whenever Vinicius came to São Paulo, Regina would call my wife on the phone and say, “Vinicius is here. Please come and join us.” So we would drive to Zequinha’s beautiful apartment...

Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard was a French physician, born in in a small city of Provence, in 1774.  Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard  - Wikimedia Commons   He never went to a medical school. But he had to go to the army during the French Revolution and worked as an assistant physician at a military hospital, and did it very successfully. He was then appointed deputy surgeon at another military hospital in Paris, and in 1799 he became a physician at L'Institution Royale des Sourds-Muets (National Institution for Deaf Mutes). In Paris, Itard began to work with Dr. René Laennec, a famous physician, the inventor of the stethoscope. Laennec was a few years younger than Itard, but had had a formal education at the university at Nantes and later became a professor of medicine at the Collège de France.  In 1803 Itard described pneumothorax. Laennec, a few years later, described the disease in more detail. Itard's Otology Book - Wikimedia Commons In 1821, Itard ...

In old times deaf people were considered mentally incompetent and lacked the civil rights of hearing persons. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church often expressed the opinion that they could not be saved! This attitude persisted until the 16th century, when it was realized that deaf persons could be educated. Among the pioneers were Girolamo Cardamo (1501-1576), in Italy,  Father Pedro Ponce de Leon (1520-1584) and Pablo Bonet (1573-1633), in Spain, and George Dalgarno (1626-1787) in England. Many deaf children were educated, but this was done privately, in small groups. Schools for the deaf did not exist.  Abbot Charles Michel de l’Épée (1712-1789) founded, in 1775, the first school for deaf children in Paris. Samuel Heinicke (1727-1790) founded, in 1777, the first German school for deaf children, in Leipzig – this school still exists. L’Épée and Heinicke used different methods, that persist to the present days; l’Épée preferred sign language, Heinicke was in favor o...

I met him in a curious manner. I had just graduated from Medical School and went to an Otolaryngology Meeting held here in São Paulo. This happened in 1956. I had heard about him before that. I had been to a theater to see “The Hands of Eurídice”, one of the many plays that he wrote. It was a one-man show – the first monologue in Brazilian theaters – and made many actors quite famous. Now I know that it was played approximately 80,000 times in 45 different countries. The Brazilian actor Rodolfo Mayer performed it more than 3,000 times. The play was shown on Broadway, at the Booth Theater, in 1952. The Spanish actor Enrique Guitart also performed it 3,000 times in Barcelona and Madrid. In England the play was produced by Sean Connery and in Sweden the director was Ingmar Bergman. But I did not know these things at that time, I only knew that I had found the play absolutely fantastic. I did not know, at that time, that he was a physician, so I was quite surprised to find him at...

The concept of specialization is complex and makes it difficult to know exactly when it started. There is an old joke that says that soon after the world was created Cain became interested in agriculture and Abel in cattle raising. The world had only four inhabitants and two of them were specialists... Regarding Medicine, we may quote Galen, who stated that specialization was common among Roman doctors. The modern medical specialities, however, evolved gradually during the 19th century. I believe that specialization in Otolaryngology begin with Sir William Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s father. Sir William Robert Wills Wilde was born in Ireland, in 1815, a son of a prominent medical practitioner. He called himself an “eye and ear surgeon.” And he was also an archaeologist. He graduated in Medicine in 1837 and became a knight in 1864 for his medical contributions, that included a successful cataract operation performed in the king of Sweden. King Karl XV of Sweden conferred on him a medal ...

Sometimes we make friends in rather unexpected ways. My wife and I met Bobby Short here in São Paulo, when he came to sing at the Maksoud Plaza Hotel. He was the best American cabaret singer of all time, and also a great pianist. And his show was fantastic. He gave Marlene an autographed copy of his latest album, with many beautiful songs. Bobby Short in São Paulo We went several times to hear him at the Café Carlyle, in New York, where he performed from 1968 until his death in 2005. His show was a little different there. Here he would sing very well known songs. In New York he would sing beautiful forgotten songs of famous composers, all worth knowing, intermingling them with original renditions of well known songs, almost always including their verses. He seemed to appreciate the circumstance that he had these Brazilian fans and he was always very cordial to both of us. His repertoire included songs by Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke,...