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At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
PubMed1995

The commemoration of surgical teachers.

This address was given at a biennial meeting of the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society. Surgical teachers are commemorated by the imitation of their pupils in accord with the human tendency to model ourselves after our heroes. The modeling is not merely a search for technical mastery but an emulation of virtues beyond the purely scientific. The lecture addresses the nature of teachers and teaching, the role of teachers as exemplars or heroes, the reasons why we commemorate certain teachers, and finally, the personal recollection of virtues, such as compassion, that make surgeons memorable for their pupils and patients. Citations from Thomas Carlyle, Jacques Barzun, and William Bennett illustrate the role of heroes, the nature of teaching, and the importance of virtue. Lessons are drawn from the lives of John Hunter and William S. Halsted, and from the work of the DeBakey family in surgery and in the craft of medical writing.

Education, Medical, Undergraduate↗
PubMed2004

Handwriting and attention in children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Adverse effects of drug therapy on handwriting fluency attributed to increased attentional control have been observed in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The writing performance of 8 children with ADHD was assessed using a digitizing tablet in a double-blind, placebo-controlled test. Participants wrote a phrase in cursive script both on and off stimulant medication writing normally, writing with eyes closed, and writing faster than normal. Medication reduced fluency of normal handwriting movements. When children with ADHD were instructed to write faster than normal or with eyes closed, however, more fluent and even automated movements resulted, even on medication. We also assessed 10 children with ADHD, 10 children without ADHD, 10 adults with ADHD, and 10 adults without ADHD. Participants with ADHD were assessed both on and off medication. Children with ADHD on medication were less fluent than children without ADHD. Without medication, Children with ADHD did not differ from children without ADHD; those on medication showed increased handwriting dysfluency. There was no significant difference between the adults. Both children and adults with ADHD could perform age-appropriate and automated handwriting movements. Children with ADHD on medication, however, gave more attention to the writing process, possibly hampering fluent handwriting movements.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Curiosa paediatrica II.

A small series of a dermal curiosity occurring in children is described. It appears not to have been presented heretofore in medical writings and certainly not in our South African medical literature. The constancy of its presentation suggests strongly a genetic localization for its origin (if not a fanciful one!) and the name foveae scapularum cutaneae bilaterales congenitae in true dermatological fashion is wholly descriptive, ponderous though it be for such light 'residua pennarum'!

Child↗
PubMed1997

A system for reporting the size and location of lesions in the spine.

STUDY DESIGN: A description of a method for standardizing the nomenclature used in reporting the size and location of lesions in the lumbar or thoracic spine is presented. OBJECTIVES: To make the reporting of findings on computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging scans simpler and more accurate. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Over the past 10 years, three other systems have been proposed, and parts of each have been incorporated in this system. METHODS: This is a multicenter report. A group of 12 prominent physicians, including radiologists, neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and physiatrists, at 11 centers collaborated in the formulation of this system. RESULTS: In this system, areas in the axial plane, i.e., medial to lateral, are called "zones," and in the caudocranial direction, they are called "levels." The zones are the central canal zone, the subarticular zone, the foraminal zone, and the extraforaminal zone. In the caudocranial direction, the levels from above downward are the suprapedicle level, the pedicle level, the infrapedicle level, and the disc level. The size of a lesion can be rated by the descriptive words normal, mild, moderate, moderately severe, and severe, or by the numbers 1 to 5, with the number 1 indicating normal and the number 5 indicating severe. CONCLUSIONS: The authors of the present study believe that all health care professionals who care for the spine will find this nomenclature valuable in communicating with each other, in writing medical reports, in presenting reports at meetings, or in writing scientific articles.

Humans↗
PubMed1999

[Ancient Egyptian Odontology].

In ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Djoser, circa 2650 BC, the Step Pyramid was constructed by Imhotep. He was later worshiped as the God of Medicine. One of his contemporaries was the powerful writer Hesy who is reproduced on a panel showing a rebus of a swallow, a tusk and an arrow. He is therefore looked upon as being the first depicted odontologist. The art of writing begun in Egypt in about 3100 BC and the medical texts we know from different papyri were copied with hieratic signs around 1900-1100 BC. One of the most famous is the Papyrus Ebers. It was purchased by professor Ebers on a research travel to Luxor in 1873. Two years later a beautiful facsimile in color was published and the best translation came in 1958 in German. The text includes 870 remedies and some of them are related to teeth and oral troubles like pain in the mouth, gingivitis, periodontitis and cavities in the teeth. The most common oral pain was probably pulpitis caused by extreme attrition due to the high consumption of bread contaminated with soil and/or quern minerals. Another text is the Papyrus Edwin Smith with four surgical cases of dental interest. The "toothworms" that were presumed to bring about decayed teeth have not been identified in the medical texts. It was not until 1889 W.D. Miller presented a scientific explanation that cavities were caused by bacteria. In spite of extensive research only a few evidence of prosthetic and invasive treatments have been found and these dental artifacts have probably been made post mortem. Some of the 150 identified doctors were associated with treatments of disorders of the mouth. The stele of Seneb from Sa'is during the 26th dynasty of Psamtik, 664-525 BC, shows a young man who probably was a dental healer well known to Pharaoh and his court. Clement of Alexandria mentions circa 200 AD that the written knowledge of the old Egyptians was gathered in 42 collections of papyri. Number 37-42 contained the medical writings. The household remedies in ancient Egypt were unique and future research will most likely give us new answers about pathology and health care of that time and a better understanding of old medical concepts.

Dentistry↗
PubMed1995

To nurse the young: breastfeeding and infant feeding in late Imperial China.

The article concerns breastfeeding and infant feeding in late imperial China, as described in medical texts and family records. Special instructions on nursing appeared in Chinese medical writings from the tenth century on as pediatrics became a medical profession. Instructions changed over time, as did the notion of human milk itself. Advice dealt with how best to select a wetnurse and with how and when to provide solid foods as a complementary and supplementary infant diet. Practical examples from medical case records, and biographical and family documents, reveal people's real experience with breastfeeding and infant feeding.

Breast Feeding↗
PubMed2002

Predictive validity of the Medical College Admissions Test Writing Sample for the United States medical licensing examination steps 1 and 2.

Despite the amount of published research on the predictive validity of the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) taken as a whole, few published reports separate the individual predictive validity of the Writing Sample. The purpose of this study is to provide data on the predictive validity of the Writing Sample for the national licensing exam used in the United States. Subjects consisted of 1992-1995 matriculants from a publicly owned medical school in the Southeastern United States. Independent variables were undergraduate grade point average, and four section scores on a required admissions test (Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Verbal Reasoning, and Writing Sample). The dependent variables were Steps 1 and 2 on the three step licensing examination. Steps 1 and 2 of the examination are taken during medical school. Multiple regression models calculated additional variance accounted for by the addition of the Writing Sample to a model containing grade point average and the other admissions test section scores. In multivariate analyses, when grade point average and all admissions test scores were considered as predictors of licensing exam scores, the Writing Sample variable did not add to the ability to predicting the Step 1 or Step 2 scores. The results of this study suggest that the Writing Sample has limited predictive validity for assessing success on a national licensing exam. However, as others suggest, the value of the Writing Sample and other surrogates of communication probably lie in predicting performance in the clinical years of medical school and beyond. Additional work should include evaluating the predictive validity of the Writing Sample and other pre-medical school measures of communication with widely acceptable measures of performance in clinical settings, including physician-patient communication.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

[The end of a myth? The topic of charity care of indigent patients in deontologic texts especially in the 17th century].

Deontological writings of the 17th and early 18th century frequently stress an obligation of physicians to provide free medical care to the poor. This obligation can be traced to medical writings of antiquity and to medieval civil and canon law. Medical authors of early modern times restricted this duty in many respects: they emphasized that a physician was obliged to treat without remuneration only if the patient was in mortal danger, if nobody else could be found to pay for the treatment, if no other physicians were available, or if the patient himself had called on him for help. In this context, a debate on the definition of poverty played a decisive role. Physicians employed by towns or by the state were obliged to provide free treatment to a well defined group of poor inhabitants. Still, the general right of physicians to their fees was strongly emphasized too. On the basis of the deontological sources of the 17th and 18th century it is not possible to determine to what degree physicians of the time did in fact offer free medical care to the poor. A moral obligation to offer treatment to all persons who could not afford the physicians' fees, did not exist.

Charities↗
PubMed1989

American physicians' earliest writings about homosexuals, 1880-1900.

The expansion of diagnostic categories in the late nineteenth century to include behaviors not previously interpreted as medical problems raised questions about the validity of defining behaviors as disease and the role of individual responsibility for these behaviors. One instance of this medicalization of behavior was the elaboration of "sexual inversion" as a new disease in American medical writings of the period. In searching for a defining characteristic of diverse cases, clinicians described sexuality as a fundamental aspect of being rather than simply an aspect of behavior, and created an identity for their patients that altered the way they thought about themselves and were viewed by society. Although the medical diagnosis later became a central feature in the social oppression of homosexuals, it offered the possibility of construing behaviors in a new way.

History, 19th Century↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A self-scored medical history teaching technique.

A technique to teach second-year medical students to make diagnostic assessments from information gained in a medical interview is presented. This method involves having students read transcripts of actual interviews, write medical histories, and make medical assessments of the patient's problem without benefit of physical examination or laboratory data. Four lectures were given which discussed the relationships between symptoms and physical illness. Students wrote medical histories and made diagnostic assessments based on transcribed medical histories. They then discussed the medical and psychosocial aspects of the patient's problem with family physicians in small group discussions. A new self-scoring technique is described which gives students rapid feedback on their written medical histories.

Education, Medical↗
PubMed1977

Scientific and medical English.

Ten historical extracts are quoted to show that the problems of jargon and indifferent English in scientific and medical writings have been with us for a long time. One improvement is that criticisms printed in the correspondence columns of medical journals have become less abusive.

Language↗
PubMed2005

[The Greek art of medicine in Rome].

The term "ancient medicine" is often perceived as tantamount to Greek medicine, as most medical writings from the classical period originate in Greece. These texts later became the basis of Western medical thought. Even though the Romans adopted Greek medicine, it continued to be alien to them; they persisted with their practical approach to medicine alongside the Greeks' more theoretical view. This article deals with how Romans reacted to the invasion of Greek doctors, and how this is portrayed by contemporary Roman authors, especially Pliny and Celsus.

Foreign Medical Graduates↗
PubMed2005

[The pathography of Dostoyevsky or the dangers of being the Father of the Idiot].

The widespread genre of pathography, or medical biographies of famous people, may be interpreted as a case of stigmatisation. It has been suggested by proponents of the idea of stigmatisation that, by labelling geniuses "mentally ill", psychiatrists advanced their own interest and gained prestige for their own profession. Though this explanation may sound plausible, it appears too schematic to match a more sophisticated reality. The use of medical diagnosis, which doctors applied to celebrities, may appear to stigmatise, but the motives and consequences of writing medical biographies were undoubtedly more various than the enhancement of narrow medical interests. Besides doctors and their supposed victims, the practice of pathography involved other interested parties including literary critics, educators and the lay public. This was the case of the nineteenth-century pathographies of Dostoyevsky, when, suggesting that the writer was mentally ill, psychiatrists followed into the critics' steps.

Epilepsy↗
PubMed1988

The eighth-month fetus: classical sources for a modern superstition.

Among obstetric patients from diverse backgrounds, we found a superstition that the prognosis for preterm infants born at eight months' gestation is poorer than for those born at seven months. After several women on a high-risk inpatient unit spontaneously expressed fears caused by this belief, we investigated its origin. A treatise attributed to Hippocrates is devoted to the idea, which appears to have been current in the Greek world by the fifth century BC. The doctrine was elaborately developed by subsequent Greek physicians and philosophers. It appears in the Talmud and in medieval texts, as well as in early modern medical writings. The unquestioning citation of a dogma of the Ancients until modern times is a common phenomenon in medical history. The persistence of this ancient scientific doctrine as an "old wives' tale" causing inappropriate patient anxiety makes it interesting to the modern obstetrician.

Gestational Age↗
PubMed1992

['Physica' of Hildegard von Bingen as a source for the 'Kochbuch Meister Eberhards'].

In this article a previously unknown fragment of Saint Hildegards 'Physica' is added to the list of extant manuscripts. Extracts from three books of the 'Physica' ("De Plantis", "De Piscibus", and "De Avibus") were found to be incorporated in a late-medieval German cookbook, the 'Kochbuch Meister Eberhards'. While the German sources for the cookbook, such as the 'Regel der Gesundheit' and the 'Breslauer Arzneibuch' have been known for some time, the Latin parts have traditionally been neglected by scholars. Neither were they included in the 1963-edition of the cookbook nor studied in any detail in the past. The discovery of the 'Physica' as their source provides us with new insights into Eberhard's compiler-work and the literature which was available to him, as well as the reception of Hildegard's medical writings in the fifteenth century.

Germany↗