My World: Simple pictures. Simple stories.

[fahim mohammed]

Hi. I am a traveler. A simple one at that.
I take simple pictures of simple people. And weave simple stories around them for my granddaughter.

My pictures are not earth shattering. I have realized they don't have to be.
But they have to be what I am. Simple. Easy for my family to relate to. Brings us joy of our
and from our ordinary lives.

I recently went on a medical journey. Medical tourism you might say. Not far from where I live.

My granddaughter was waiting for me when I returned home after a few days absence.

Here is what she gave me..

Simple wish for a simple man. The greatest gift he would have liked to have.

As I said, nothing special. Simple people. Simple feelings. Like all of us have.

Why in this category. As I said the journey was about medicine.

 

[Michael Nagel]

Fahim,

it all sums up to four letters - care and/or love. Unfortunately these have have become four-letter words in another sense. Something which was given without condition has become a good. Let's remove these conditions.

All the best to you and let's hope that what goes around comes around in the positive way.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[fahim mohammed]

Michael, thank you for stopping by.

Likewise, my best wishes to you and yours.

 

[fahim mohammed]

" With us there was a Doctour of Phisyk 
In al this world ne was there noon him lyk 
To speke of phisik and of surgerye... 
Wel knew he the olde Esculapius 
And Deyscorides and eek Rufus 
Olde Ypocras (Hippocrates), Haly and Galeyn (Galen), 
Serapion, Razi (Rhazes) and Avycen (Avicenna)..."

from Geoffrey Chaucer, the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (c. 1390)*

There once lived a physician. A good physician. A noble physician. A dedicated physician.
He was the first to describe pericardial abscesses of the heart. He also recommended tracheotomy when necessary. He invented an instrument to perform that procedure. His wrote a medical book. It was called the ' Taysir '. It was a standard medical work in Europe. Later on it was translated into Latin in 1280 CE.

Besides the ' hospitals ' of those days, this physician recorded every single symptom, diagnosis, various treatments given and the results os each treatment on his patients. The ' files ' he recorded such information in have luckily survived and various copies are available for perusal.

A small room, an unassuming desk, paper, his own pens and ink, paper, a few mats. And of course, a few cups for tea and coffee. A candle to work in the dark.

Hundreds of thousands of us across the globe undergo treatment for heart disease almost daily. Take it for granted.

Look at the image above. We owe a debt of gratitude to such physicians from across all time periods, whose efforts have contributed to the excellence in medicine we take for granted today.

The physician? His name was Ibn Zuhr. Maybe more familiar as Avenzoar.

 

[fahim mohammed]

It is over a hundred years, since he died. Will there be another like him? Some say never. The world had lost the greatest mathematical genius that ever lived.

But no one is indispensable. No one.
A 100 years later, a man is born. one day in the future, he shall rival in intellectual prowess the giants that went before him.

He shall author as many as 200 books on various subjects. Foundations shall be laid for theories that shall later, much later enable men like Galileo and Copernicus to understand the true relationships of the earth to other heavenly bodies.

The young man looks around the city. Wonders about what lies behind the ambiguity and perplexity of his city. There must be some codes. Mathematical codes and rules!!

But of importance to us here is what this young man observes. What bothers him?

The young man walks the crowded marketplaces. Looking for answers. he is entranced by light!!

He asks a simple question..what is light? He rejects the Ptolemy's theories. He challenges the very foundations of Greek mathematics. He dare challenge Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. But challenge he does.

The world is about to witness a revolution in mathematica thought and theory. A new era is about to be born, that shall lay the foundation for all that we know today light!!

Light, and its interaction along with some clever mathematical algorithms, allow my son's collegues to play
non-invasively with my heart!!

But for the young man, thousands of years back, such things are unimaginable. He pursues his work. His experiments. His mind soars above most those of mere mortals. He has mastered the mathematics of the Greeks and of Al-Khowarizmi. He is stuck. He shall have to invent mathematics again. To deal with the properties of Light. The laws that shall govern reflection and refraction.

Scans of a diseased heart. My heart really. Thousands of years ago, a young man would ask about light.
How do we see? Why are objects visible? How can they be made visible?

This young man lived in a town. Between the Tigris and the Euphrates. A marsh delta. A town called Basra.
Much, much later...thousand of years later people shall rediscover the name of this town.

Unfortunately for all, these people would have forgotten the History of Basra. They would come to Basra, not for knowledge...but for greed.

An empire, like others before it, that intoxicated and walloping in its own grandeur would have failed to learn from the mistakes of history. Against the wishes of the sages that lived in that era, this empire would embark of a path to glory that shall leave its image in tatters. It excuses that of a child caught with his/her hand in a cookie jar. Mission accomplished? I guess historians shall answer that question.