Aaron Rothstein is a physician and writer whose contributions to The Weekly Standard explored topics at the intersection of medicine, science, and culture. His essays for the magazine, published between 2011 and 2018, examined themes of healing, perception, and the natural world.
Until the 19th century, the relationship between the function and the physiology of the nervous system was largely a mystery. Physicians believed in the vital importance of the brain but knew little about its structure and purpose. For hundreds of years, conventional wisdom in medicine followed the…
In the best-known court case in the Hebrew Bible, two women come to King Solomon, the wise, wealthy, and powerful king with the following quandary: One of their children died in his sleep, while the other remains alive. There are no witnesses, and each mother claims that the living child is hers.…
In his tragedy Phoenissae, Seneca wrote “Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.” For Seneca, death was a part of life, a natural process that could not be avoided. And indeed, at the time, death pervaded the world through famine, disease, childbirth, and…
Stalin’s Genocides
Modern Medicine Turning Points in the