10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
A Completely Passive State of Being
During my last years on the Other Earth a system was invented by which a man could retire to bed for life and spend all his time receiving radio programs. His nourishment and all his bodily functions were attended to by doctors and nurses attached to the Broadcasting Authority. In place of exercise he received periodic massage. Participation in the scheme was at first an expensive luxury, but its inventors hoped to make it at no distant date available to all. It was even expected that in time...Folksonomies: science fiction
Folksonomies: science fiction
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notes24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
How Physicians Were Once Like Today's Economists
The moral game of blame attribution is only one subtype of misattribution arbitrage. For example, epidemiologists estimate that it was not until 1905 that you were better off going to a physician. (Ignaz Semelweiss noticed that doctors doubled the mortality rate of mothers at delivery.) The role of the physician predated its rational function for thousands of years, so why were there physicians? Economists, forecasters, and professional portfolio managers typically do no better than chance, y...
1 John Tooby describes a past when you were more likely to die from seeing a physician and likens it to economics and other forecasters who do no better than chance.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Autism as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Diseases and other medical conditions can also have this self-fulfilling property. When medical conditions are widely discussed in the media, people are more likely to identify their symptoms, and doctors are more likely to diagnose (or misdiagnose) them. The best-known case of this in recent years is autism. If you compare the number of children who are diagnosed as autistic64 to the frequency with which the term autism has been used in American newspapers,65 you’ll find that there is an a... 1 notes
notesAs the illness gets more attention, more people are diagnosed with it.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Doctors Should Pause Before Tending to Patients
When a doctor arrives to attend some patient of the working class, he ought not to feel his pulse the moment he enters, as is nearly always done without regard to the circumstances of the man who lies sick; he should not remain standing while he considers what he ought to do, as though the fate of a human being were a mere trifle; rather let him condescend to sit down for awhile. Folksonomies: medicine
Folksonomies: medicine
1 notes
notesAnd consider that it is a a human being they are tending to.
09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Bryan Would Lose His Religion if He Studied Evolution
Direct observation of the testimony of the earth ... is a matter of the laboratory, of the field naturalist, of indefatigable digging among the ancient archives of the earth's history. If Mr. Bryan, with an open heart and mind, would drop all his books and all the disputations among the doctors and study first hand the simple archives of Nature, all his doubts would disappear; he would not lose his religion; he would become an evolutionist. 1 notes
notesFor the evidence is so overwhelming in the book of nature.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Doctors are Always Under Attack
Doctors have been exposed—you always will be exposed—to the attacks of those persons who consider their own undisciplined emotions more important than the world's most bitter agonies—the people who would limit and cripple and hamper research because they fear research may be accompanied by a little pain and suffering. 1 notes
notesBy those who consider their emotions more important than suffering caused by research.
23 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Doctors Interfere with the Living Principle
Doctor, no medicine.—We are machines made to live—organized expressly for that purpose.—Such is our nature.—Do not counteract the living principle.—Leave it at liberty to defend itself, and it will do better than your drugs. 1 notes
notesA quote from Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte on how living things know how to survive on their own without the interference of medicine.
29 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Medical Knowledge Comes by the Low Road
There is no short cut, nor 'royal road' to the attainment of medical knowledge. The path which we have to pursue is long, difficult, and unsafe. In our progress, we must frequently take up our abode with death and corruption, we must adopt loathsome diseases for our familiar associates, or we shall never be acquainted with their nature and dispositions ; we must risk, nay, even injure our own health, in order to be able to preserve, or restore that of others. 1 notes
notesJohn Abernethy describes how doctors must get their hands dirty and take up "abode with death and corruption" in order to attain medical knowledge.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Looking at babies attentively makes us treat them differe...
Until very recently doctors didn't use analgesia when they operated on small babies, because they thought their minds were too primitive to really feel pain or to remember it if they did. This is a dramatic example, but it often seems as if we discount children's pain compared with adult pain. Child abuse isn't evil because it may produce neurotic adults but because it abuses children. Divorce doesn't have a cost because it may produce adults who have difficulty with relationships but because...Seeing babies as young adults makes us treat them humanely; whereas, in the past, babies were denied analgesia because it was thought that their primitive minds did not sense pain the way an adult's mind did.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Seeing the Baby on the Ultrasound
There’s no doubt that seeing one’s future child on an ultrasound monitor is a powerful experience, the first visual evidence of the fetus in a culture in which seeing is believing. The encounter can be so compelling, in fact, that some medical providers are using it not just as a diagnostic tool, but as a treatment in itself. Zack Boukydis, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been working with doctors for almost a decade to expand routine screenings into...Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
1 notes
notesAs the first touchpoint, experience as a parent.
