The case of Jennifer Mee demonstrates (if one can assess this from press coverage) that new medical knowledge reaches doctors slowly, if at all.
Afflicted with what is called, technically, “intractable hiccups,” the teenage Ms. Mee has apparently not been offered the medical literature’s best-documented treatment: digital rectal massage.
A simple Pubmed search for the term “intractable hiccups” turns up the key reports, which were written by Drs. Francis Fesmire and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven. But not all doctors consult the medical literature, and perhaps Jennifer Mee’s physicians, whom news reports describe as “baffled,” have not done a literature search.
[NOTE: the digital rectal massage medical case reports eventually earned the 2006 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize for Drs. Fesmire, Odeh, Bassan and Oliven.]