Author: Steven Lange

Steven Lange Steven Lange (13 Posts)

Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member

Albany Medical College

Steven attends Albany Medical College as a student of the Class of 2017. Raised in Queens, New York, he earned a BA in English with a minor in Biology from Binghamton University in May 2013. Some of his interests include poetry, martial arts, traveling, and continental philosophy. He is currently aspiring to become a radiologist.




Is Medical Humanism a Humanism?

Published by Steven Lange

It is 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, and 250 medical students are filing into the lecture hall to listen to a lecture on health care and society. The chatter is not one of excitement, but of disconcertment. Many students complain that their time would be better spent studying hematology. These are not uncaring students who disavow the needs of the disabled, but a generation that demonstrates a palpable reaction to the way that medicine is taught. We may be quick to fault them for their alarming aversion to a discussion on ethics, but we must also consider: is ethics meant to be force-fed?

M/R/G

Published by Steven Lange

Stunted by the shadow of its flow / pouring, rumbling in a lifelong swing / through the raging heart of darkness rings / the steadfast drip: a weak and lonely bruit, / and pitting insult in the turbid skin / with shocking faults to grimly thinning walls / the fallen house still stands; the flagging strands / and edematous sands chafe the burning soles.

LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy: Reopening the Doors of Perception

Published by Steven Lange

After a nearly 40-year moratorium, a controlled study of the therapeutic use of LSD in humans has been published in The Journal of Neural and Mental Disease after the pioneering work of Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser. Sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and approved by the BAG (the Swiss Drug Enforcement Agency), the study has completed treatment of all subjects after having enrolled its first patient in April of 2008. Many hallucinogens, such as psilocybin and MDMA, are being investigated today for their clinical benefits as a result of a gradual effort to reexamine the pharmacologic and psychiatric interests in hallucinogens.

The Metaphorization of Cancer

Published by Steven Lange

A leading expert on language and the mind, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker suggests in his book “The Stuff of Thought” that “conceptual metaphors point to an obvious way in which people could learn to reason about new, abstract concepts,” as well as provide the imagery and substrate to help store and share knowledge. The metaphorization of illness allows us to describe it in easily-digestible forms which have relevance and relation to our everyday speech. The …

Treating the Disease and Treating the Illness

Published by Steven Lange

Standing at the foot of her hospital bed, it was clear to me — as it was to the attending physician — that my grandmother was suffering from a disease: an obvious structural disorder identified by scientific medicine as negatively impacting her health. Hilar mass, cavitation, hypercalcemia. Keratin pearls, intercellular bridges. Hemoptysis, dyspnea, edema. It was also apparent to this eight year-old, however, that she was burdened by an illness, or an impaired sense of well-being. …

EKG Calamity (or, Love and Cardiology)

Published by Steven Lange

In that sweet primordial pause before knowing, before knowing you had that brilliant lub without whose cause my sinus would but sing for two. This small sound within the chamber mocks with flagrant range the mistook letter which does not describe the valve but more the knock of passion greater than mere muscle twitch. I have no way of knowing the golden disarray: how you would stare at tiring light pound the heart and dry …

Quandary Over Coffee

Published by Steven Lange

Perhaps it was the persistent scare of the superbug that compelled the sun-riser to surrender to the notion that a coffee cup had been sullied by a minor fall: that the time perceived was unequal and unrelated to the speed of selfish microbes settling on the rim where his mouth was meant to be.   The Unknown Soldier in his drowsy cadence assumed clumsy control over the machine while residents in loose blue pants were …

The Medical Gaze: What Do Foucault and the French Revolution Have to Do with Modern Medicine?

Published by Steven Lange

As students of medicine, we become familiar with the proper course of questioning that leads us to identify a patient’s problem. We take for granted a traditional paradigm of questioning, asking: “What brings you into clinic today?” and “Where does it hurt?” What we do not realize is that this conditioning is the result of a great epistemological leap taken after the French Revolution, which shaped the face of modern-day medicine.

Steven Lange Steven Lange (13 Posts)

Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member

Albany Medical College

Steven attends Albany Medical College as a student of the Class of 2017. Raised in Queens, New York, he earned a BA in English with a minor in Biology from Binghamton University in May 2013. Some of his interests include poetry, martial arts, traveling, and continental philosophy. He is currently aspiring to become a radiologist.