“Winston Churchill: Inguinal Hernia Repair on 11 June 1947,” by J. Allister Vale and John W. Scadding,” is one of the research studies featured in the article “Medical Research: Sarsaparilla, Nose, Churchill’s Hernia“, in the special Formulas & Recipes issue of the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research). Read the article online. And if you like, […]
What’s in a surname, if one wants to see portents about the medical fates of persons who have those surnames? This study aims to answer that question, focusing on British surnames: “British Surname Origins, Population Structure and Health Outcomes—An Observational Study of Hospital Admissions,” Jakob Petersen, Jens Kandt, and Paul A. Longley, Scientific Reports, vol. […]
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who in 2020 co-won an Ig Nobel Prize for his teachings about the Covid-19 pandemic, is yet again pushing public health discussions into new and perhaps unimagined territory. The Washington Post reports: SAO PAULO, Brazil — Facebook removed a video in which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro falsely associated coronavirus vaccines with […]
“Medical Research Review: Flower Pot on the Head” is a featured revue article in the special Haphazard issue (volume 27, number 3) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if a flowerpot on the head inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
Two recent medical studies add milk and sugar, so to speak to what we know, medically, about coffee enemas. Up with Coffee Enemas (2020) “Coffee Enemas: A Narrative Review,” Linda L Isaacs [pictured here], Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, vol. 21, no. 12, December 2020. The author, an M.D. in Austin, Texas, explains: Coffee […]
This decades-old medical report has received surprisingly little attention from the baseball community. Baseball season is about to begin again, in the USA. Please alert anyone to whom this study could be useful: “An Unusual Foreign Body in the Rectum—A Baseball: Report of a Case,” M.P. McDonald and D. Rosenthal, Diseases of the Colon and […]
The BMJ, formerly named The British Medical Journal, published this notice today, in which they regretfully bury a recent new policy: Reversing our decision to charge for placing a BMJ obituary February 23, 2021 At the beginning of February, we introduced a new policy to charge a fee for people wishing to place an obituary […]
If someone has a hunk of meat stuck in their throat, should you advise them to drink a mouthful of hot coffee to dislodge the meat? This study suggests an answer to that question. “Esophageal Hematoma Associated with the Bolus Ingestion of Hot Coffee,” Yorinari Ochiai, Daisuke Kikuchi, and Shu Hoteya, Internal Medicine, epub 2020. […]
Tonight, August 29, 2020, is International Bat Night. The UNEP/Eurobats organization explains: The Bat Night has taken place every year since 1997 in more than 30 countries on the last full weekend of August. Nature conservation agencies and NGOs from across Europe pass on information to the public about the way bats live and their […]
Mari Stoddard maintains a list of examples, from the medical world, of nominative determinism. “Nominative determinism” is the intentionally inflated name for a common phenomenon: some people work at professions that harmonize with their family name. Examples from the Stoddard list are these three doctors in the field of Emergency Medicine: Dr Pulse, Dr Borer; […]