mementomori
Posts by this author
January 27, 2007
Sloth...Myopia...Nihilism...Hypocrisy...Ennui...
Just to pronounce them reveals the ugliness within. God forbid anyone should ever have a doctor who worships such character flaws...which reminds me of something:
What better way to illustrate how these faults perform a disservice to patients than…
January 25, 2007
Last week a colleague told me about a new patient he had acquired, who had fired his old doctor for failing to diagnose the cause of the patient's rather distressing symptoms. It turns out that my friend had no problem discovering the cause of this patient's suffering, which was due to an unusual…
January 23, 2007
As a continuing public service to ScienceBlogs readers we present another edition of "News Youse Can Snooze By":
1. Eating 30 grams of cereal fiber a day cuts the risk of developing breast cancer in half for women up to age 50.
A study of 35,000 women over seven years found those with the highest…
January 21, 2007
His poetry endures because of its directness, and the literal fidelity of his beautifully circumstantial description of nature, of scenes, and places, imbued with a kind of majestic sadness which takes the place of music.
-British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Stanley Kunitz. New York: H.…
January 18, 2007
In a small study of female college students, researchers found that a caffeine supplement seemed to lessen the muscle pain that crops up a day after a challenging workout.
Just when we got our membership card into the haughty I-Eshew-Coffee club, they publish this little study. We confess we're…
January 17, 2007
"Bush Hails Drop in U.S. Cancer Deaths"
President Bush on Wednesday hailed the downward trend in cancer deaths in the United States, a signal that medicine is making strides in the battling a disease that kills nearly 1,500 Americans a day. "This is the second consecutive year there was a drop in…
January 16, 2007
Mirabile dictu, the electric company came by and replaced our downed power line this afternoon. Blogging will resume tout de suite, but first can I at least get the temperature in here above 60 degrees?
(Up from 44, that is).
While cranking up the thermostat in my office today I thought about some…
January 14, 2007
Once again a despicable ice storm has forced us out of our house...I'm currently living in a tent city run by some Food-For-Oil executives by the banks of the muddy Meramec River in Fenton, Missouri...unable to blog...am using a friend's computer for this message...freezing rain coming down like a…
January 10, 2007
Last night after watching one of those intellectual programs on cable television I found myself for some reason reminiscing about school days. I remember spending countless hours in chemistry labs, usually with a partner of dubious genomic origin, manipulating Mother Earth's precious powders and…
January 9, 2007
"One should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is…
January 6, 2007
These two little maxims seem connected so I would like to share them both:
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."
-Norman Cousins (1915-1990)
Of all the quotations written about living and dying I find this one to be absolutely stunning, a…
January 4, 2007
DUSP6! MMD! STAT1! ERBB3! LCK!
Was ist diese? CB radio patter? Pilot to co-pilot chatter? 3rd-and-long huddle banter?
Of course not - that would be too easy. These cryptograms represent five different genes found within non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) that predict the both the relapse-free…
January 2, 2007
[Editor's Note: this is an entry in an occasional series; parts I-IV can be found here.]
If one needs a bit of cheering up these days, say after inadvertantly watching one of those cable talk shows, here's a suggestion: read about the medical advances made since the end of World War II. They…
December 29, 2006
As 2006 draws to a close I believe it is appropriate to list a few New Year's resolutions in the hope that they inspire the gentle reader to probity, if not an appearance on Oprah. No, these resolutions are not mine. After an unfortunate incident I refuse to commit any more promises to paper,…
December 27, 2006
Olive oil diet cuts your risk of cancer
A new study suggests that consuming 5 teaspoons of olive oil - either virgin, common or refined - reduces one's risk of developing cancer. Here's how they came to this conclusion:
People in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy live longer than…
December 26, 2006
This op-ed piece by Dr. Pauline Chen in today's New York Times reminded me of one of my deficiencies [Only one? If he had any sense he'd catalog the whole lot and publish it under the title "Don't Let This Happen to You." -Ed.] as a physician. The title of the story says it all:
The Most-Avoided…
December 23, 2006
Since I'm going to be busy tomorrow night celebrating Christmas I thought I'd share this poem with you a day early. It was written by a five foot two manic-depressive (putative), intellectually brilliant, Oxford educated Jesuit priest who died of typhoid fever at the age of 44.
If you haven't had…
December 22, 2006
"Subcutaneous inflammation mimicking metastatic malignancy induced by injection of mistletoe extract"
"At the risk of upsetting many proponents of alternative medicine, I also contend that intuition is no substitute for evidence."
-Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine, Department of…
December 21, 2006
There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
-Albert Einstein
Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.
-Vergil
One of the peculiar aspects of my job is that I often have the bitter pleasure of meeting…
December 19, 2006
A new study of 351 women aged 45-55 and suffering from perimenopausal hot flashes found the taking the popular dietary supplement black cohosh (Popular? Well, now I wouldn't say that. Alcohol, cigarettes and anti-depressants are popular. I don't see anybody spending a billion or two on media ads…
December 17, 2006
Edgar Lee Masters wrote forty books in his lifetime, but none equaled the success of his first: Spoon River Anthology, published in 1915. The book is a collection of 244 epitaphs written in blank verse, each spoken by a dearly departed citizen of a small Illinois farming town. The tales of…
December 14, 2006
Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.*
-Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
I almost dreaded walking into the exam room. Behind the door sat an elderly woman who had been diagnosed with an aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma earlier this fall. Among the scores of things I said to her during our initial…
December 12, 2006
Study: Long hospital shifts, sleep deprivation can kill
We in the healing arts have waited a long time for a headline like this. It seems that someone has finally acknowledged what we knew all along: working long hours is dangerous to the health and life of young doctors-in-training. Hurrah for…
December 11, 2006
[Editor's Note: The narrator, in addition to being a day late again, has identified this week's poet by his given name; since most readers won't recognize this we shall provide the poet's nom de plume: Pablo Neruda.]
No one would ever argue against the claim that Neruda was one of the 20th…
December 8, 2006
While wandering around ScienceBlogs yesterday I read that my fellow med-blogger Orac has been nominated as a finalist in the 2006 Weblog Awards under the catagory "Best Medical/Health Issues Blog." Congratulations to him and to the other ScienceBloggers finalists: Pharyngula, Deltoid, Good Math…
December 7, 2006
Smoking linked to more osteoarthritis pain
You gotta love cigarette smokers, if for nothing else but their cognitive dissonance. I used to admire them for their naiveté but four decades after the surgeon general's report on smoking I think any claim of ignorance of the risks of smoking is about as…
December 5, 2006
The following was sent to us anonynmously. The message was first checked for viruses, worms, parasites and offers to help recover millions of dollars tied up in African red tape, then scrutinized and translated, tying up much valuable time needed in the maintenance of this web log. After much…
December 3, 2006
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to…
December 1, 2006
It is hard for me to put into words what it feels like to be hit with gastroenteritis, which I had the misfortune yesterday to develop. The symptoms, as recorded in the literature - vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, headache, muscle aches, fever - certainly sound repulsive, but in some ways…
November 29, 2006
Scientists discover where the world's healthiest wines are grown
If you are a fan of red wine you might be interested in the fact that certain peculiar facts about the stuff are beginning to emerge:
1. Folks who drink a small to moderate amount of red wine daily live longer, or have reduced rates…