Category Archives: medical

amusements, medical, science

Ig Noble Awards

This year’s Ig Noble Awards for wacky and improbable science discoveries were announced a few days ago. The awards are always fun and often thought-provoking. Here are this year’s highlights. [As usual my comments in italic.]

Physics: Researchers in New Zealand found that wearing your socks over your shoes improves your ability to walk on ice.
[In what way is this not self-evident?]

Management: A mathematical study in Italy found that in some business situations, it is better to promote randomly than the choose the most qualified candidates.
[And you thought the corporate world worked on the basis of who was prepared to sleep with whom.]

Engineering: A team from the UK and Mexico found the perfect way to collect whale snot: despatch petri-dishes attached underneath a remote controlled helicopter to hover above the whale when it blows.
[Ingenious, no?]

Public Health: A study of bearded scientists working in microbial labs found that they carry along a hoard of microbes in their facial hair and may literally be taking their work home with them at the end of the day.
[Again how was this not self-evident?]

Chemistry: A team including BP were awarded an Ig Nobel for their studies over the summer of how oil, natural gas, and water interact.
[Yeah, the Gulf of Mexico makes a great summer field trip for the graduate students.]

And finally …

Biology: A UK team discovered that fruit bats engage in oral sex to prolong their sexual encounters.
[And you worried about human sexuality!.]

You can find the complete list here.

books, history, medical, science, topographical

Capital Cures

Browsing Shakespeare’s London on 5 Groats a Day by Richard Tames the other day I came across the following remedies.

Loss of hair. Try doves’ dung, burnt, failing that the ashes of a small frog

Nits in the hair. Comb with mercury ointment and pig fat
Yep that should see off the nits, if it doesn’t see you off first

Head colds. A sliver of turnip in the nostril

Tinnitus. Oil of hempseed in the afflicted ear, followed by hopping on that side

Retention of urine. Three large lice inserted in the penis
Hmm, I can imagine that might work too; not sure I fancy the side effects though

Asthma. The lungs of a fox washed in wine, herb and liquorice
OMG

Tuberculosis. Incurable, but for relief try asses’ milk and snails in their shells

I think on balance I’m glad I live in the 21st century!

medical, science, thoughts

'eye 'eewls

1 Comment

High Heels Cause Long-Term Damage says the headline.

We needed scientific research to tell us this?

Twenty years ago I had a colleague who was having serious physiotherapy because she was unable to put her foot flat to the ground, caused by spending too many years wearing 4 inch heels.

amusements, beliefs, environment, medical, music, pleasures, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Another in the series of things which have struck me, or amused me, this week.

So look, I’m going to say this thing, and you’re going to listen and believe me because … I don’t know, why would you believe me if you haven’t believed it from anyone else? […] Because in the patient corners of your heart, you’ve ALWAYS known it’s true. It’s this:
You’re not broken. You are whole. And there is hope.
[Emily Nagoski at ]

There is evidence that male babbling (what you kindly call Punditry) is a Zahavian handicap.
During both foetal development and puberty, male brains are subject to damage from hormonal processes that convert the female body and neural system into a male one (more or less). This causes males to be, on average, poor at communication. They don’t understand what they hear as well as females, can’t form their thoughts into words as well, and most interestingly, can’t think about one thing while carrying on a conversation with another human at the same time, as females routinely do.
Therefore, ability to communicate at all, let alone well, is very difficult given the handicap of this developmental brain damage. Public communication (babbling/punditry) would indicate relatively high quality for any male that could do it. Thus, all that male babbling.
[Greg Laden in a comment at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/]

The Chap Olympiad has a number of things to recommend it, apart from the variety of potential experiences. One is that its resolute promoting of amateurism, eccentric sporting and events cocks an elegant snook at the revolting orgy of corporate arrogant dullardism that infuses all major sporting events. We don’t need their cocacolaMacanike extravaganzas in citizen murdering nations. Stuff ‘em.
[“Minerva” at http://redlegsinsoho.blogspot.com]

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
[Albert Schweitzer]

Just as we should cultivate more gentle and peaceful relations with our fellow human beings, we should also extend that same kind of attitude towards the natural environment. Morally speaking, we should be concerned for our whole environment.
[Dalai Lama]

Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.
[Thomas Dewar]

beliefs, current affairs, medical, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Another in our occasional series of quotations encountered during he week which have struck me.

Bodies are … I mean, what are they? They’re these sacks of bone and meat and water held together by 2 meters of integumentary tissue. They’re battlegrounds of infection and injury
[…]
A body is a life. My opinion is that bodies, lives, people who have suffered and survived are the MOST beautiful. The marks left on their skins tell us of the strength, the resilience, the power of the person. The so-called flaws of a body show you what a person has made of themselves
[…]
Real bodies, real lives, real people. Real things have scratches.
[Emily Nagoski, ]

“D’you get any good presents?”
“Yeah, me Aunty Jean got me a goat, but they delivered it somewhere in Africa … unbelievable”
[from a Christmas card spotted at ]

Life is full of miracles, minor, major, middling C. It’s called “not being in a persistent vegetative state” and “having a life span longer than a click beetle’s.”
[Natalie Angier, The Canon]

unconstitutionally vague
[US Federal Court of Appeals in rejecting the policy of the FCC on indecent words in broadcasts]

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.
[Arthur C Clarke]

beliefs, medical, personal, science, thoughts

Don’t Assume

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In interacting and communicating with other people we make a lot of assumptions about the other person. Sure, we have to make some assumptions to even begin to communicate (for instance that the other person can understand our language); if we didn’t we would have to start every conversation by asking a complete set of detailed questions – so many we would end up never communicating anything. But making too many, and too deep, assumptions, and not testing those we must make, is highly dangerous. Along with not listening to what the other person actually says, is in my experience the root cause of the majority of misunderstandings.

So I decided to set out those things which it seems to me we assume about the other person or the situation at our peril:

  • Any one person speaks for everyone
  • Anyone is right about anything
  • “Culture” or “society” is the same everywhere and for everybody
  • Someone else’s ethics and morals are the same as yours
  • How young or old or young the person is
  • Someone else is of a given race or nationality
  • What someone else’s religion or spiritual belief system is
  • What someone else’s first language or nationality is
  • What someone else’s politics are
  • What someone else’s personal values are
  • What someone else’s economic class is
  • What someone else’s financial situation is
  • What someone else’s level of education is
  • What someone else’s level of intelligence is
  • What someone else’s experiences or background are
  • What someone else’s life history is
  • What the person’s family or home background is
  • What someone else’s sexuality is or that someone else’s sexual ideals or ethics are the same as yours
  • Someone else has the same body or beauty ideals you do
  • Someone else has the same values, desires, interests, likes and dislikes as you
  • All things have the same effect on all people
  • Anything is universally yucky or universally yummy
  • What someone else’s skills and aptitudes are
  • What you find easy or hard they will also find easy or hard
  • What worked for you will work for anyone else
  • Someone else is better, worse, the same or different to you
  • Any given word means the same thing to everyone
  • One kind of learning works for everyone
  • Your logic is someone else’s logic
  • What they think is the same as you think
  • Someone else’s common sense is the same as your common sense
  • What is right for you is right for anyone else, and vice versa
  • Anything is possible or impossible

Yes we often can (and do) make pretty good guesses at many of these and we base our initial communications on them, but we’d better be prepared to test our guesses and change our position accordingly. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where we’ve made an assumption about (say) someone’s education only to find we’re totally wrong – haven’t we all come across someone with a doctorate doing a job we wouldn’t expect (driving a taxi or a bus, dealing in second-hand books, selling insurance). Or we’ve spoken to a colleague on the phone and then been surprised on meeting them to find they’re a Sikh, a Muslim or Afro-Caribbean. 

Beware quicksands! … Orator caveo.

freedom of speech, medical, people, science, sexuality, thoughts

Obscene …

3 Comments

… and obscene is not a word I use often or lightly, but I am horrified at the story which is circulating of a New York doctor who is reducing the clitorises of young girls in the belief that they are abnormally large. In deference to my blood pressure I shall say no more here but refer you to the story over on The F-Word. If this is even half true the man (yes, a man, of course) is in my view a paedophile and child abuser.

Hat-tip: jillysheep.

beliefs, medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Religion and Sex

“Religion** is bad for your sex life”, at least according to Dr Emily Nagoski.  And she should know as she’s a college health (and sex) educator in Massachusetts, with a doctorate in Health Behaviour and Human Sexuality and other degrees in counselling and psychology.  What I like is that she holds very firm and forthright views and isn’t afraid to air them.  In what she calls “my most offensive post yet” she says why she believes religion is bad for your sex life and how it is that she cannot choose to believe and have any faith.  Here are a few snippets:

Religion** is bad for your sex life. I don’t mean it doesn’t help, I mean it’s actively destructive […]

[…] religion is bad both at the individual level and at the cultural level. Individually, it results in inhibitions, shame, fear, guilt, bias against others, and acceptance of gender-based stereotypes. Culturally it results in the oppression of women and sexual minorities […] and the obstruction of the scientific study of sexuality.

But the worst thing about religion is that it makes it okay to just believe shit because you want to. No religion, no matter how liberal, escapes that.

[…] I think faith/religiosity is an innate part of human psychology. I think human belief in an invisible family in the sky is either product or byproduct of evolution. However, it is, for no apparent reason, NOT an innate part of MY psychology […]

I know that the experience of faith is both real and important for lots of people, and I know it offends them when I discuss faith as a form of self-delusion, but I genuinely don’t understand, plain old don’t understand […] how a person can CHOOSE to believe in something.

They choose to believe it because it makes them feel good. And I think this characterizes MOST people. I think MOST people are able to believe more or less anything they like the sound of. Indeed we’ve made a virtue of it. Just BELIEVE. It’s The Secret, ya know. […]

[…] most of the work I do related to religion involves trying to untangle the knots religion has knit into a person’s sexuality. In my experience, in 90% or more cases religion has caused some form of damage to a person’s sexuality […]

Which is sort of interesting in that it says what I have wondered for many years.  Mind I wouldn’t go so far as Emily, I think — at least not a stridently.  And just because I don’t believe any any form of overarching deity(s) (I just don’t need them, or anyone, to decide my morals for me) doesn’t mean I would deny such a crutch to anyone else.

No, what was interesting for me was that someone who should know, and should be in a position to see, has the courage to say that religion has an adverse effect on sexuality and thus by implication on other taboo areas of health.

But do go and read the original post in full for yourselves.  It’s interesting even if you don’t/can’t agree with it.  And there is a (surprising good natured) discussion in the comments too.

** By religion Emily means ANY and ALL religions.

beliefs, medical, nudism, science, thoughts

Air Baths

Thinking yesterday about nudism, I recalled some connection with the great American statesman, scientist, diplomat and thinker Benjamin Franklin.  And indeed it is so for Franklin was in the habit of taking a daily “air bath”, as he called it.  Almost 250 years ago on 28 July 1768, when in London, Franklin writes to the French physician, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg:

I greatly approve the epithet which you give, in your letter of the 8th of June, to the new method of treating the small-pox, which you call the tonic or bracing. method; I will take occasion from it to mention a practice to which I have accustomed myself. You know the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic; but the shock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I rise almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and, if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night’s rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined. I find no ill consequences whatever resulting from it, and that at least it does not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute much to its preservation. I shall therefore call it for the future a bracing or tonic bath.

Elsewhere Franklin also writes:

In summer-nights, when I court sleep in vain I often get up and sit at the open window or at the foot of my bed, stark-naked for a quarter of an hour. That simple expedient removes the difficulty (whatever its cause), and upon returning to bed I can generally rely upon getting two or three hours of most refreshing sleep.

Let us remember too that Franklin was no mean inventor.  Amongst other things he gave us: bifocals, the flexible urinary catheter, the lightning conductor, an especially efficient design of wood-burning stove, the odometer, America’s first public library as well as hugely increasing our understanding of electricity and mapping the Gulf Stream.  And as if that wasn’t enough he was one of the founding fathers of the United States.

Who would doubt the wisdom of such a man?