I resonated magnetically the other day. I became a virtual needle. It didn’t hurt at all. The way I knew was that for a brief period all my molecules lined up facing north. For a few seconds I saw everything clearly, without passion or confusion.

I saw Gerardus Mercator at a long table, poring over his projection of the known world, truth in navigation sliced like a deck of cards, thirteen organs plus the joker. It was 1569, not that long ago really, considering how long people have been at sea. He would have liked having an MRI himself, I thought, with the complex math, the radiofrequency spins and all. But he was too early. The world had only been round a few hundred years.

In Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts and Humanities 5, 1, 2008.