Tag: Doctors Patients and Diseases
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“Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease”
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Overconfidence is an undesirable quality. It does not enhance a physician’s approach to learning, nor to changing when change is needed. How a doctor diagnoses or treats a condition today may cause future generations of physicians to wonder, “What were they thinking? Did they not think about potential long-term effects?” Such future…
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The sixtieth anniversary of the “Battered Child Syndrome”
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.”—Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist In 1962, Dr. C. Henry Kempe and colleagues at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver published their groundbreaking article, “The Battered Child Syndrome,” in the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 The article alerted…
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Humans with tails
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of acorkscrew with a small tuft of hair on the tip.”— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude1 The chance of a child being born with a tail-like lumbosacral appendage is small. About sixty cases have…
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Wedding anniversary
Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned…— W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming It is their tenth wedding anniversary. They are traveling to a restaurant on a black, moonless night. They round a curve as a semi-trailer truck veers across the center line.…
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Drama in brief
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Four years earlier I had had the sad duty to announce her debut as a protagonist on the stage of cancer. Now I was witnessing the last act. She came to the first visit with her elder sister, an old acquaintance from our student days and close friend of my sister’s. She…
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Furniture of bones
D. Brendan JohnsonMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States “Would you like the new patient?” My senior resident offered me the next admission, a patient being stabilized in the emergency department after a suicide attempt. As a fresh medical student in the beginning of my clinical education, I quickly said yes, plucked up my courage, and went to…
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Learning the meaning of love
Charlotte EliopoulosGlen Arm, Maryland, United States In the summer before my senior year in high school, I spent my vacation as a candy striper. In the sixties, this was an opportunity for young girls interested in nursing to serve as hospital volunteers and gain some insight into their career of choice. Being young and naïve—and…
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The invisible manager
Javishkar ReddyJohannesburg, South Africa When I was twelve, I was hit on the head by a cricket ball. A few days later, I had my first seizure. Over the years, I have had many attacks, which have resulted in three chipped teeth, a cracked skull, a dislocated shoulder, and my tongue bitten several times. A…