Month: January 2018
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Complexity and understanding
Travis Kirkwood Ontario, Canada Do humans understand each other? There are profound and important facts to consider in any honest attempt to answer this question. The question is broad, but worth asking repeatedly. Modern writers and thinkers fail to fully appreciate the merit in marrying science and philosophy, which the great psychotherapists of the…
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One year infirmed in USA & Japan: Differing practices in stroke rehabilitation
Laurel Kamada Hirosaki-shi, Aomori-ken, Japan The author mother visiting her in the Intensive Care Unit after the stroke. After surviving a massive hemorrhagic stroke five years ago, I spent half a year in stroke rehabilitation hospitals in each of two different countries. I stayed in hospitals and nursing homes in the United States before my…
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The basest of the senses: medical unease with the sense of smell
Rebecca Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States “…the primitive organ of smell, the basest of the senses” – Patrick Suskind, Perfume Paul Broca, who mapped the parts of the human brain involved in olfaction and argued that they had been supplanted by free will. For the past two centuries, the medical profession has had…
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African medicine
Sheillah MaongaLondon, United Kingdom My mind was always stubbornly set against African medicine and I did not pay much heed to it even when I visited Africa for two weeks each year. It was something that had no bearing on me—until last year when I took my child to see my mother. My mother lives…
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The art of consumption – TB and John Lavery
Emily BoyleBelfast, Northern Ireland Tuberculosis, (TB) is often regarded as a historical disease—in the 1880’s it caused a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Mortality rates from TB fell by 17% between 2005 and 2015,1 but it remains an important health concern. Worldwide it is still the second most common cause of death from an…
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Polio conundrums
Denis Gill Dublin, Ireland Ancient Egyptian stele of Ruma For most children, infection with the polio virus caused no symptoms or a minor illness. But about 1% of those infected experienced paralysis of one or both lower limbs. Worse still, bulbar paralysis could lead to the inability to breathe. The effects of polio were…