Content tagged with “medicine”

“ An explanation of why a quirk of legislation has caused ambulances to cost so much ”

“ A settlement in Antarctica is so remote and isolated, that you can’t still have your appendix and live there because the nearest hospital is so hard to get to that a burst appendix will kill you. ”

“No one quite knows, it seems. Many historians state that the ‘correct’ ancient symbol for medicine is the Rod of Asclepius, which is a single serpent winding around a staff. Asclepius was a diety associated with healing. Myth states that he used snakes in his healing rituals. The caduceus is a…”

“ In 1986, the Air Force flew a human heart a long distance, very, very fast, so it would survive until it got implanted. ”

“This categorizes the surface of red blood cells present in blood. Different blood types have red blood cells with different surface receptors. The profile of these receptors cause the body to recognize or reject cells as ‘belonging.’ If it rejects them, the body will fight off the foreign red blood…”

“I found a few reasons for this: Doctors and dentists have just been historically separated from each other. They train in different schools, and practice in different locations. Health insurance started in the 1920s and 1930s at hospitals, with doctors who practiced there. Since dentists never…”

“So, here’s the thing – if you know the secret, there’s not much point reading the book. And everyone knows the secret by now – ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has become a common idiom. But back when this was published in Victorian England, no one knew the twist, and it was probably a hell of a surprise in the…”

“A term used in teaching hospitals to differentiate students from full, practicing physicians. I spoke to a cardiologist friend who told me the term isn’t used much outside of academia. In a teaching hospital, residents often provide services to patients, but they are not those patients’ assigned…”

“This book was written by a physician and medical researcher. I’s a polemic against shady ‘alternative medicine’ practices and health conspiracy theories. To be clear, the author isn’t against more mainstream…alternative (?) stuff – things like chiropractic, essential oils, CBD, etc. What the author…”

“ An Austrian man was a dwarf until the age of 20. Then he started growing to end up almost 8-feet fall. ”

“This appears to be a term for a surgery done while the patient is awake, either under local anesthetic or no anesthetic. I couldn’t find a formal definition, but I found a bunch of usages where it seemed to fit: From various sources: Reportedly, following a further waking surgery during which…”

“These are the stereotypical headgear worn by doctors in the past. A band goes around the head, and a circular mirror is attached to it. When it’s worn like this, it’s actually being stored, not used. To use it, the doctor would position it over one of their eyes. The mirror had a small hole in the…”

“ Chris Duntsch was a very, very bad surgeon. He killed or maimed 90% of his patients, but no one wanted to speak up and embarrass the hospitals where he worked. ”

“ This is an old word for the ‘flu.’ ”

“Absolutely stunning novel. I had heard of the book for years. My mother was born in Ethiopia in the 1940s (my grandparents were missionaries from New Zealand), and several people had told me that the story in the novel resembled my mother’s experience there as a child. The book was purchased for me…”

“A special type of needle used specifically to deliver smallpox vaccine. It has two small prongs on the end, and it’s just deep enough to puncture the skin multiple times and deliver the vaccine to the correct depth. It was used heavily in the worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1960s…”

“This is called ‘sublingual administration,’ as ‘lingual’ generally refers to the structures of the tongue and mouth. There is a large mucous gland under the tongue that supplies saliva to the mouth. Anything that comes into contact with this gland is absorbed into its capillaries, then into the…”

“This was an era of medicine in the 1700s and 1800s where physicians performed extreme treatments on their patients in an attempt to ‘shock’ them out of whatever condition ailed them. Treatments such as bloodletting, purging, and sweating were common. These very likely caused more deaths than they…”

“This is a sobering book. It’s about dying, and what we can and should do at the end of someone’s life. But it’s a necessary book. The American medical system is designed to keep people alive, no matter what. But is that always the right answer? When is life not worth living? The book is not about…”

“This is apparently a blog by the science editor for NPR. She took a bunch of blog topics and wrote a book which is a collection of chapters about gross things, like bodily fluids, death, and composition. This is a fun book. It’s breezy and morbidly interesting. Each chapter is self-contained, and I…”

“ There are still a tiny handful of polio survivors across the USA living significant portions of their lives in iron lungs which are slowly deteriorating. ”

“ A company in Rwanda delivers blood and medical supplies by drone. They can parachute a package of blood 50 miles away in 30 minutes, ordered via text message. ”

“ A baby has been born resulting from an embryo fertilized 27 years prior. The baby effectively lived almost three decades before it was born. ”

“ The story of one man’s descent into, and recovery from, locked-in syndrome. ”

“ Memories of a physician who was in the emergency room where JFK was brought after he was shot in 1963. ”

“ A donor organ was rushed to its recipient in a Lamborghini police car. ”

“ Multiple studies have suggested that playing Tetris immediately following a traumatic event visually engages the brain in a way that can lower the future effects of PTSD. ”

“ Morbidly, auto crashes are a good source of healthy organs for transplantation. Pandemic lockdown means fewer crash deaths, and therefore fewer organs for transplant. ”

“ A tragic retelling of the decline of Robin Williams by his wife, as Lewy Body Dementia took its toll. ”

“ An excellent explainer of what the different cancer labels mean, from ‘Stage X’ to ‘Advanced.’ ”

“ One of the players in the Super Bowl got his medical degree last year. He was drafted to the NFL during his third year of medical school. ”

“ A re-read. I first read this 7-8 years ago. Absolutely brilliant book, mainly about the use of simple checklists in surgery and aviation, but relevant to any discipline. One of the best business books I’ve ever read. ”

“ Addiction may be a universal problem, but rehab is very different when you’re absurdly wealthy. ”

“Thrilling story of a cholera outbreak in London in the 1850s, and the physician who tracked down the source. At the time, illness was thought to come from ‘bad air,’ but a physician named John Snow mapped the illnesses and determined that they were clustered around a water pump in Broad Street. No…”

“ A backstory behind a seemingly successful penis transplant, and the complications and ethical questions it raises. ”

“ This is a medical procedure which might be an urban legend. ”

“ The US health care system only works because doctors and nurses have little work-life balance and they constantly expand their workflow to fit the demands placed on them. ”

“ The annual American Psychiatric Association conference is an orgy of the absurd and a symbol of everything wrong with American medicine. ”

“ This starts as a blistering indictment of Epic, the medical records system, but morphs into a larger discussion of how doctors relate to technology and whether it makes things better or worse. ”

“I love Atul Gawande, but I didn’t love this book. It wasn’t what I expected, which I normally take as my own fault, but I don’t think it’s what anyone would expect from this book. But, first, the book is really interesting. He has a total Malcolm Gladwell thing going on with this book – it’s a…”

“A shockingly good book about the history of the greatest disease Man has ever known. The author tracks the history of cancer from when it was first identified in 4,500 BC through to the present day. The approach is holistic – the author examines cancer clinically, scientifically, politically,…”