February 13, 2007
Medical school in the front room anybody?
Can’t be the only one out there with medical envy… not sure if it’s the white coats, the strolling about with pencils in the pocket, the pulling across of those unfortunate curtains or just the ability to stare into someone ear with intrigue on its top setting. I fancy the most likely envy is the ability of doctors to stay awake as long as they do.
The only time I had television channels I spent the entire televisual time on Channel 42 watching those three pronged fork yokes puncturing dodgy gall bladders. I had to cut it out when one day the much younger Puffin climbed up beside me and clunked me on the nose with his plastic hammer and announced he was giving me a Rhinoplasty. Should add that I was constantly dizzy watching those procedures, but reminded myself to stick with it, since medical students pay thousands of dollars for such information and here it was gratis thanks to the TV channel trial offer on a postcard.
It’s a grateful day when one finds handy medicine with no pictures: Andrew Cunningham writes and narrates a major new 30 part narrative history series charting the development of western medicine. Six weeks of radio programmes in this series.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/medicine/
Unlikely you’ll actually get any directions on how to deal surgically with bursitis, but who can miss episode 7 about fever. TV adaptions of books owe so much to the flannel patting rituals fever requires at the side of the four poster beds as the husband/ wife watches their loved one pass on from the doorway. Even today with a packet of tylanol extra in the cupboard fever still has that threatening quality that drags you back and forth to the forehead, esp if presenting in a small Puffin. It’s rather like a politician you can’t trust exactly how it presents itself.
December 16, 2006
Neuro Henry on brain, science and medicine.
Here’s the listen again link to the Free thinking program with Henry Marsh — neurosurgeon.
He puts the cap on notion of the soul and afterlife, so basically you can relax on that front. By the sounds of it unlikely we’ll be returning as frogs or anything wiggly. He also somewhat dismisses the implied significance of left/right brain divisions, saying it’s not as absolute as previously purported by some factions. There’s a whole wadge of other stuff, but due to poor memory I cannot recall. It’s probably the most engaging thing I have heard on this yellow brick road of lunching with logic. Maybe because it’s audio. Maybe because he’s a bit of a skeptic, which appeals to my first language: pessimism.