Google Books has an awesome number of old medical texts online–stuff from the 1850s and on up, and it’s just fascinating to see what these clinicians believed to be true about certain diseases. A Manual of Clinical Medicine and Physical Diagnosis
is one of my favorites, as well as A cyclopedia of domestic medicine and surgery . If I’m reading it right, they once believed that bile was somehow secreted through the hepatic veins and into the bile duct.

I wonder what they’ll be thinking when they read our medical journals 150 years from now.

(Update: Also cool is the fact that many of these books came from my own medical library ! And when I say “my own,” I mean Stanford’s, but still.)

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A comment from my Grey’s Anatomy rant deserves promotion to its own post:

I am one of the physicians who helps develop the CPR guidelines and teaching materials for the American Heart Association (AHA), and I am glad that folks are concerned about how CPR is depicted in the media — so am I. I know its “just a TV show”, but a lot of folks get important impressions from TV… we are trying to collect examples of bad CPR on TV to discuss at the AHA, if any of you can point us to specific TV shows/episodes, we’d be grateful (and you’d possibly be doing the world of CPR teaching a service!)

Email any tips or clips to [email protected]

thanks!

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Kelly Osbourne admits someone in her family has been recently diagnosed with HIV . Ozzy and the IV drugs?

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Every so often I post a link from Ask Metafilter , a community where people can ask questions and others try to help them out with an answer. From the “I hope no one takes this random person’s advice comes this doozy :

The poster has asked if it’s okay to take expired Tylenol. Fair question.

The very first answer on the thread:

But more seriously, I was in the hospital for a fever once and the doctor packed me full of tylenol. I asked if I’d OD or something and he told me that there was a maximum absorption of some kind, so I shouldnt[sic] worry.

I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know how the chemical composition degrades over time(or if the decompositions are dangerous), but I don’t think you’d have to worry about ODing if you need to take more to make up for any that has degraded.

The poster says he or she is not a doctor, and I’m sure the person was just trying to help, but it is ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE that you can’t overdose on Tylenol. It’s actually not that hard to do, and it can destroy your liver in a day or so.

Just another reason to see a doctor, and take advice from strangers with a grain of salt.

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While a somewhat amusing look at med student clerkships like Medicine , Pediatrics , and Ob-Gyn , I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t say that I felt like Panda took the wrong approach to clinics.

Maybe it’s just different med school cultures, but he mostly starts out each one essentially saying the med student doesn’t matter, and isn’t really important to the team. If you don’t feel like you’re a valued member of the team, prove to your attendings that you are . Ask questions, take an active role, challenge yourself, ask for more responsibility, and most of the time, you will be rewarded. I was treated like an intern during my Medicine, Peds, Psych, and ER months. I had my own patients, and my attendings and residents pretty much let me manage my patients myself (with their oversight, of course). I wrote the H&Ps, daily notes, and discharge summaries. On my inpatient Peds month when I was on call, it was just me and the attending in-house! We managed the entire floor and PICU together ourselves. Did I do anything the attending couldn’t have done him or herself? Of course not. But I wrote orders, responded to questions from nurses, and got called throughout the night for admissions and procedures (again, with attending oversight). The medical student knows the patient better than anyone else on the team , and often I was able to provide medical history or dispo information that no one else on the team knew. Are you saving peoples’ lives? Often, no, but you’re learning how to, and if you don’t feel like you’re contributing to the team, you’re missing the experience.

Note: if month after month you’re having plenty of “slacking potential,” complain. Maybe it’s just me or my teams, but more often than not I was busy almost all the time–if not with patient care activities, note-writing, order-writing, etc, then with didactics or classes. Call me goodie two-shoes, that’s fine, but I’ve always preferred to work my butt off during clerkships and really try to learn a lot now than when I’ve got the MD after my name and people expect me to know stuff.

So an overall thank you to my programs and attendings and teams–I’d hate to be the exception! Make yourself matter, you’re paying for it dearly!

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First her son, now her , found unresponsive in her hotel room. Overdose?

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You’d think “unnamed Arizona treatment center” would want all the publicity it could get–after 3 years of crystal meth and gay sex with a male prostitute, Ted Haggard is now cured of his sexual deviance ! In only 3 weeks! Wow!

I had no idea that gay people are just “acting out.” Thanks, Teddy!

(I feel really bad for his poor, poor wife, who likely has known the truth for a long time, and his poor children–having to publicly swallow the lie that daddy was just a sex addict, but now he’s cured.)

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