Reflections

Parkinson’s disease is an affliction of the nervous system that leads to tremors and difficulty in walking, movement and coordination. One of the commonest neurological disorders of the elderly, it is now treatable by a wide array of medications and surgical techniques, though the results leave much to be desired. The eponymous describer of this disease was a remarkable English apothecary and surgeon, Dr James Parkinson. Born on April 11, 1755 at 1 Hoxton Square, in the parish of St Leonard’s which still stands and in which church he was baptized, married and was buried. , His father, John, was an apothecary, surgeon, and anatomical warden in Hoxton for many years and lived with his wife (James’ mother) Mary in this parish. James Parkinson studied at the London Hospital Medical College for six months when he was 20. He was then apprenticed to his father for six years and qualified as a surgeon in 1784 when he was 29. A year and half after becoming a medical student, James became...

The sixties were the heyday of technological change and progress. This statement may sound heretical as we today live in an age of technology, of instant communication and change. But it was in the sixties that human beings first walked the moon and have never walked on it since (though the last moonwalk was in the early seventies.) It was in the sixties that the airplane that flew twice the speed of those flying even today came into being (the Concorde) and it was then that one began to dream of Mars landings and of thinking computers and robots that would be indistinguishable from men. In the sixties, one confidently expected to see flying cars, transplanetary travel and humanoid robots by the turn of the century. These were not just the pipedreams of individuals like starry eyed youngsters like me, but also the carefully considered opinion of analysts who tried to predict the future. But alas the twentieth century is already more than a decade old and these wonders have yet t...

This blog has been enriched by the writing of Mr Swapan Sen, who has contributed several important articles.( See here , here, here and here ) . I will be uploading one more very soon. This article is by his son, Sutirtha who is an IT professional and researches the World War of the last century as a hobby. This article is on Anne Frank, the German Jewish girl who became the face of the unfortunate Jews who perished in the holocaust during the thirties and forties. The Diary Of Anne Frank is required reading for all who believe in liberty and basic human values. Tomorrow would have been the 83rd Birthday of this courageous young lady. The Immortal Spirit Of Anne Frank It was the late thirties of the twentieth century. Germany was in the grasp of a fanatic called Adolf Hitler, the self-proclaimed Fuhrer & messiah of the German people. " Close your hearts to pity. Eighty million Germans must obtain what is their right .” These word...

When I look back n my childhood, the times I seem to remember most fondly are the summer holidays. Six weeks of no school, warm afternoons when most adults slept and you were free to do what you wanted. Living as we did in a “colony” as it was known in those days, (today we would call it a housing complex perhaps?) we had friends aplenty so that we were rarely in want of company. Our games were extremely serious, often leading to fisticuffs and long periods when bosom friends turned to foes. We played cricket, football and hockey, we swam and cycled and we played other games which have today been largely forgotten, even in the rural setting s where some of them originated. I can think of three games that I have never seen any children play in recent times, but which we played with gusto. Seven tiles was a game in which you built a minitower of flat stones, seven in number. One team used a rubber of tennis ball to try to knock this over, throwing the ball from a fixed distance. If on...