Tag: seizures
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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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Of Mice and Men: A differential diagnosis for Lennie Small
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden In John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel Of Mice and Men,1 the two main characters work as itinerant laborers on farms and ranches in California during the Great Depression. Their only attachments are to each other. George is “small and quick” with “sharp, strong features,” while his companion, Lennie, is “a huge man, shapeless…
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Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, and Moses
Faraze A. NiaziJack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. Numbers 12:6 (NIV) “Harriet and Joan, what topic has your two fine souls so deeply engrossed?” “Moses, we were discussing recent hurtful…
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Derek Ernest Denny-Brown
JMS PearceHull, England Amongst the titans of medicine, it is not easy to pick out those whose footprints will not fade with passing time. Derek Denny-Brown (Fig 1) was one. He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. After his graduation in medicine from Otago University in 1924, he won a Beit fellowship to study in…
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Heartbreak in the nursery
Shruthi RavishankarChennai, India I began the long drive to the pediatric hospital on a route peppered with traffic jams and incessant honking. Some of my medical school classmates simply do not attend the rotation, but I always make it a point to go. It is fun to see the smiling babies and their proud mothers…
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Faith, neuroscience, and “the thorn” in Paul’s side: Abrahamic interpretations of epilepsy
Christina PerriStony Brook, New York, United States The experience of epileptic seizures, as characterized by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and others, resonates with the intense religious consciousness of shamans, who describe losing all sense of time, place, and even self.1 Most religious traditions have complex or even ugly relationships with epilepsy that offer explanations for…