Having failed to perish, they proceeded to publish. Serendipity and not-careful-enough cooking technique by Norwegian shellfish scientists (for their own Christmas gathering) led to a nasty illness for two-thirds of their group, which led to a biomedical investigation, which led to a published scientific study about it all, which led to a report in Forskening.no […]
Tag: illness
Nauseated restaurant criticism
Restaurant reviews, some of them — especially the reviews written by non-professionals — have taken on new importance. They can be a means of identifying illnesses that otherwise go unreported to health officials. Mary McKenna (who is sometimes known professionally as “Scary Disease Girl”), writing on The Plate blog, explains: Yelp Helps NYC Health Department Track Foodborne […]
‘Shoe-smell’ to control epilepsy – myth or reality?
Dr. Harinder Jaseja, who is Associate Professor of Physiology at the Gajra Raja Medical College, Gwalior, India, has undertaken one of the very few studies investigating the efficacy (or otherwise) of ‘shoe smell’ to control epileptic attacks. Out of a group of 32 epilepsy sufferers, 3 were given the opportunity to use the smelling shoe-smell […]
Instrumental Maladies (part 4: Violins)
A final (but by no means complete) roundup of the work-related instrument-specific health-risks that professional musicians may encounter during their career … Part 4 : Violins • Violin chin rest eczema due to east-indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia ROXB). • Chin rest allergy in a violinist • Allergic contact dermatitis on a violinist’s neck from para-phenylenediamine […]
Instrumental Maladies (part 2: Guitars)
Continuing Improbable’s partial listing of the work-related diseases which professional musicians might encounter … Part 2 : Guitars • Habit tic deformity secondary to guitar playing. • Incomplete anterior interosseous nerve syndrome in a guitar player • Contact dermatitis in guitar players • Occupational acroosteolysis in a guitar player • Guitar player acro-osteolysis • Selective […]
Instrumental Maladies (part 1: Saxophones)
Music may be ‘the universal language of mankind’, and ‘the food of love’, but it’s produced at a cost – from the musician’s point of view it’s unfortunately not always entirely 100% risk-free. Here is a partial list of the health-hazards of playing a musical instrument . . . Part 1 : Saxophones • Hypersensitivity […]
For Munchhausen enthusiasts, real or pretending
If you are enthusiastic, or want to be enthusiastic, or are inclined or prone to fake being enthusiastic about faking illness or about people who do, one source of information is Dr. Marc Feldman’s Munchausen Syndrome, Malingering, Factitious Disorder, & Munchausen by Proxy Page. (Thanks to investigator Scott Langill for bringing this to our attention.) […]
Eby, man of zinc
George Eby has a web site which has an American flag, a picture of George Eby, and an insistence that George Eby believes that zinc can cure the common cold. As the web site puts it: “Over the years, George Eby Research has become the world’s leading authority on curing common colds with zinc.” Some […]