The patient's photograph in the medical record as a diagnostic tool.
(10/34)
Two case reports are presented: one of acromegaly and the other of hyperthyroidism. Previous photographs of the patients that appeared in their military medical record were of considerable assistance in making the correct diagnoses. When "smart cards" are issued in the future, inclusion of a photograph as an integral part of the patient's medical information should be considered. (+info)
Jacob Christian Schaffer FRS, a versatile eighteenth-century naturalist, and his remarkable pioneering researches on microscopic crustaceans.
(11/34)
Jacob Christian Schaffer was the first to appreciate the morphological complexity of the microscopic crustacean Daphnia. His investigations, published in 1755, provide an excellent example of the difficulties facing those who, for the first time, attempted to elucidate the structure of extremely complicated animals of small size, of which there were no familiar counterparts. Nevertheless he not only revealed many hitherto unsuspected anatomical features but attempted, with some success, to explain their function. Most notably he showed that Daphnia produces a current of water that draws suspended particles into its complex food-handling machinery. An earlier suggestion of how it feeds was completely erroneous and misleading. A pioneer of the comparative method, Schaffer provided an excellent example of how it helped him to understand, if not entirely to resolve, a complicated mechanism. That reproduction can be either parthenogenetic or sexual presented problems that were not resolved for more than another century. Unaware that males exist, and on the basis of seemingly sound, but misleading, observations, he concluded that Daphnia is a hermaphrodite. (+info)
5th College of Physicians lecture -- a physician's odyssey: recollections and reflections.
(12/34)
Some reminiscences of events since the 1930s are presented chronologically. These include sketches of informal introduction to Medicine at the General Hospital (SGH), the amazing spirit of medical professionals during the "Syonan" years at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) and of professors of Medicine and training in Hong Kong, Singapore and Britain. An account of practice of Medicine in the Civil Service, of teaching and research and of evolution of specialist training and examinations in the Academy of Medicine, the University's Post Graduate School (DGMS) and Specialist Accreditation Board (SAB) is given. The over-riding values of our profession are stressed, always contributing to improving the quality and standards of practice in the interests of our patients and fellow men. (+info)
Germ cell research: a personal perspective.
(13/34)
Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw (1839-1900). Registrar general 1879-1900.
(15/34)
Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw was born in Whitehouse, County Antrim, in 1839, and learned his medicine at the Dublin School of Medicine when its reputation was at its highest. If his teachers strayed from the art of bedside medicine into science it was into meteorology that had been revived by Thomas Sydenham, the 'English Hippocrates' in the seventeenth century. When Grimshaw was appointed Registrar General for Ireland in 1879 he diverted attention from the acute epidemics of zymotic diseases to chronic pulmonary affections that numerically were far more deadly. Cartography became an obsession with him, and he used it to show that Ireland was divided by phthisis into east and west. Koch's 'great discovery' in 1882 that tuberculosis is an infection not a 'constitutional' disease made him change his long-held views, and in the decade before his death in 1900 at Carrickmines, County Dublin, he became an active advocate of the new knowledge, distressed by the fact that thriving Belfast and its hinterland had the highest mortality from phthisis in Ireland. His concern for the health of young girls employed in large numbers in the linen factories was matched by his landmark advocacy of young ladies anxious to gain the licence to practise medicine in Great Britain and Ireland. (+info)
Predicting adult health and mortality from adolescent facial characteristics in yearbook photographs.
(16/34)
Several important longitudinal studies in the social sciences have omitted biomarkers that are routinely recorded today, including height and weight. To account for this shortcoming in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), an 11-point scale was developed to code high school senior class yearbook photographs of WLS participants for relative body mass (RBM). Our analyses show that although imperfect, the RBM scale is reliable (alpha = .91) and meets several criteria of validity as a measure of body mass. Measured at ages 17-18, the standardized relative body mass index (SRBMI) was moderately correlated (r = .31) with body mass index (BMI) at ages 53-54 and with maximum BMI reported between ages 16 and 30 (r = .48). Overweight adolescents (> or = 90th percentile of SRBMI) were about three times more likely than healthy-weight adolescents (10th-80th percentile of SRBMI) to be obese in adulthood and, as a likely consequence, significantly more likely to report health problems such as chest pain and diabetes. Overweight adolescents also suffered a twofold risk of premature death from all nonaccidental causes as well as a fourfold risk of heart disease mortality. The RBM scale has removed a serious obstacle to obesity research and lifelong analyses of health in the WLS. We suggest that other longitudinal studies may also be able to obtain photos of participants at younger ages and thus gain a prospectively useful substitute for direct measures of body mass. (+info)