Is the thumb a finger? How many fingers does a person have on one hand? Difficult questions? People have had the wrong finger(s) amputated because some health care workers refer to the digits of the hand by number e.g. first finger, second finger, etc and this can be confusing. Would it not be safer and […]
Tag: medicine
Pseudoaccomodation in Pseudophakes
If you’ve kept up with the literature about pseudophakes, you are probably already familiar with the study by Plotkinov and friends: “Objective assessment of pseudoaccommodation in pseudophakia” [article in Russian], I.A. Plotnikov, V. M. Sheludenko, and N. P. Narbut, Vestnik oftalmologii, vol. 123, no. 6 (2006): 35-37. BONUS: Also from the year 2006, Tarek Abd El-Basset […]
More atropia than ever before!
One day in Victorian England, Dr. John Milner Fothergill (above), who was indeed an eminent physician with many other achievements (and whose weight was as immense as his medical knowledge), accomplished something that merited an item in the March 1878 North Carolina Medical Journal [vol. 1(3): p. 177] all by itself. “Atropia”, now called atropine, […]
Cockney Rhyming Slang and Medical Terminology
A refinement on a subset of UK medical slang [see my treatise on the general topic] is provided in a short communication by authors Anand N. Bosmia, Christoph J. Griessenauer, and R. Shane Tubbs for the International Journal of History and Philosophy of Medicine, Volumes 1-3: 2011-2013. See: Cockney Rhyming Slang and Medical Terminology. Examples : […]
Medical Slang in British Hospitals
Medical Slang in British Hospitals is given a detailed examination by Adam T. Fox, Michael Fertleman, Pauline Cahill and Roger D. Palmer in : Ethics & Behavior, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2003. “The usage, derivation, and psychological, ethical, and legal aspects of slang terminology in medicine are discussed. The colloquial vocabulary is further described and […]
Assessing the taste of medicine
This study probes in some detail the sentiment that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”: “The bad taste of medicines: overview of basic research on bitter taste,” Julie A. Mennella [pictured here], Alan C. Spector, Danielle R. Reed, and Susan E. Coldwell, Clinical therapeutics, vol. 35, no. 8 (2013): 1225-1246. The authors, […]
The Fashionable Diseases Conference
Fashionable scholars will flock to The Fashionable Diseases Conference this coming July 3-5, hosted jointly by Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, sponsored by the often-fashionable Leverhulme Trust. The most fashionable diseases, for purposes of the gathering, are the ones suffered, diagnosed, discussed, and flaunted between the years 1660 and 1832. That timespan, evidently, saw the height of fashion […]
Clowns and/or health
Linda Rodriguez McRobbie writes, on the Smithsonian blog, about “The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary“: Even the people who are supposed to like clowns—children—supposedly don’t. In 2008, a widely reported University of Sheffield, England, survey of 250 children between the ages of four and 16 found that most of the children disliked and even […]
Nosocomical [sic] infections from Holy Water?
From a medical point of view, not all religious practices are always 100% risk free. See, for example, a recent Improbable article : ‘Official word: The body of Christ is not and cannot be gluten-free.’ But gluten intolerance is not the only area for concern – what about Holy Water in hospital chapels for example […]
Chin Up, Testicularly
Body parts can be rearranged and/or augmented, in some cases. Here is such a case: “Testicular Augmentation Using Chin Implants,” Fernando Ugarte y Romano [pictured here] and Adolfo González Serrano, Journal of Sexual Medicine, epub October 22, 2012. The authors, at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, México, report: “Aim. To describe an unprecedented testicular […]