The use of cannabis in our society is a common problem and the subject of much medical and political debate. We present a case in which a 17-year-old male regular cannabis user developed a large swollen uvula (uvulitis) and partial upper airway obstruction after smoking cannabis. Symptoms resolved with the ...

Recently, religious organisations, governments and public institutions have begun to offer apologies for historical wrongs. Can they legitimately do so? Departing from the tendency, Professor Hubert Markl, President of the Max Planck Society, has offered strong reasons for not apologizing for the crimes of medical scientists who experimented on human ...

Although most medical lexicons contain up to 80% of clinical terms used in an ambulatory patient medical records archive, preliminary research suggests that they may be far less complete for radiology terms. We therefore compared the likelihood that several existing medical lexicons would contain terms found in a radiology report ...

Before the first European visited Japan in 1549, traditional Chinese medicine was mainly employed in Japan. Francisco de Xavier, a missionary of the Society of Jesus, tried to promote the introduction of Christianity by providing a medical service for Japanese citizens. However, Japan implemented a national isolation policy in 1639 ...

In the past several decades there has been an explosion of research in genetics and on genetic inheritance. This new genetics is part of contemporary biomedicine and forecasts great advances in alleviating disease and prolonging human life. It also encompasses notions about biological family and kinship relations. I propose that ...

The recent politicization of medical regulation in the United Kingdom has destabilized the historic relationship between medicine, society and the state. The purpose of this article is to present a political analysis of that relationship and its likely future by identifying the essential elements of power which determine its composition ...

William Osler's medical career spanned two centuries and three nations: Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. Though not an especially noted scientist, he was an innovative teacher, a professional organizer, and mentor and colleague to many grateful--indeed, sometimes adoring--students and colleagues, some of whom became influential in the Anglo-Saxon ...

Establishment of a rational antibiotic policy (RAP) is a key issue for both better care of patients and combating antimicrobial resistance [1-5]. The problem of rational antibiotic use is complex [6,7] and requires co-ordination of the activities of healthcare authorities, institutions and individual practitioners. Furthermore, on a community basis, it ...

(Arthur) Rupert Hallam worked as a dermatologist in Sheffield from 1911 to 1944. Early in his career, he also specialized in diagnostic radiology and established this speciality in Sheffield. Hallam performed investigative work on the aetiology of papular urticaria and erythema multiforme, the prognosis of psoriasis, and the aetiology of ...

Ancient cultures were as preoccupied with the aesthetics of appearance as individuals are today. Dermabrasion for skin resurfacing has been performed with salt, pumice, ground grains, bone, and horn. Chemical peels have been performed with acids, metals, botanical extracts, or animal fats. Tattoos, ear piercing, makeup, skin treatments, and massages ...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to contrast the outcome of schizophrenic patients between Bali and Tokyo, the former being a non-industrialized society and the latter an industrialized society in Asia. METHOD: A total of 51 Balinese schizophrenics and 40 schizophrenics in Tokyo were evaluated by five outcome ...

In tune with an Enlightenment sensibility that focused on the search for order and regularities, monsters were given a marginal position in eighteenth-century medical works. By contrast, they had an important place at the Royal Society during the second half of the century. This article first focuses on the general ...

From 15-18 September 1999, the Travelling Surgical Society celebrated its 75th anniversary with a meeting in London for 37 member surgeons, culminating in a dinner at The Royal College of Surgeons of England attended by 140 people. During the dinner, RCS President, Mr Barry Jackson, spoke on behalf of the ...

A 1990-91 country-wide survey in Nigeria showed the prevalence of hypertension to be 11.2% in those aged 15 years and above. The management, however, has been shown to be inadequate. At the instance of the Nigerian Hypertension Society a Consensus Meeting of National Medical Societies and other interest groups produced ...

OBJECTIVE: To present a case of organic arsenic intoxication after consumption of bird's nest soup in a Vietnamese patient. METHOD: We have described the clinical picture of a patient with organic arsenic intoxication, and high levels of urine arsenic after consumption of bird's nest soup. RESULT: Withdrawal of bird's nest ...

PURPOSE: To investigate a possible relationship between evisceration and sympathetic ophthalmia. METHODS: Data from Mt. Sinai Medical Center and University Hospitals of Cleveland were collected and histopathologic specimens were reviewed for 51 of 90 patients who underwent evisceration between 1980 and 1996 and who returned for follow-up examinations. Additionally, a ...

The late 1930s challenged laissez-faire medicine. Recognition of serious inadequacies in the distribution of medical services stirred activists who questioned fee-for-service delivery and posited a national health program, including health insurance. The AMA and its components--state and county medical societies--counterattacked, mobilizing money and their powerful political arsenal to fight government ...

Euphemisms are place-holders for important concepts. They may disguise a practice which one might abhor if it were given another name. In Nazi Germany during World War II, euphemisms were used to desensitize physicians and society to the horrors of a program of euthanasia. This article examines some of the ...

The article describes the history and organization of the European Society for Medical Oncology. The society, founded in 1975, aims at advancing medical oncology on a pan-European basis. Postgraduate training and education constitute a major part of ESMO's activities through a current CME programme of courses and other activities. Each ...

The debate on medical futility can lead to a fresh revisiting of the doctor-patient relationship and with it a restoration of common sense and reality to society's grasp of the powers and limits of medicine. In my view, the duty of the physician is to attempt that which is of ...

The terms 'menopause' and 'mid-life women' have become the subjects of both the medical gaze and a billion-dollar industry built by pharmaceutical companies to manage the 'problems' of menopause. Menopause is a discursive construction, a label that has become endowed with a large number of taken-for-granted assumptions about physical and ...

During the first year of the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War many doctors and patients arrived in Bloemfontein. One of these, Lord Denman, a grateful patient, donated an instrument cupboard to the Volks Hospital which survives to this day. In the later years of the war, Dr George Pratt Yule founded the ...

This paper aims to document the history of the South African Society of Medical Women (SASMW). It examines the aims and objectives of the society and the work it undertook, and briefly assesses its impact and the reasons for its decline. The material presented in this paper is based on ...

This paper provides a critical review of contrasting ways of thinking about the nature of disability in society. It highlights the dominance of the medical model of disability whereby medical and rehabilitative professionals and practitioners tend to conceive of disability as an individual physiological and/or medical condition requiring the afflicted ...

An account is given of the origin and development of the British Association of Head and Neck Oncologists in relation to American and European Societies. Disillusion with the results of treatment and the poor management available for these patients before 1950, led to the formation of head and neck oncologic ...

This paper replies to the comments made by James C. Riley. It provides a defence of the assumptions adopted in 'Physician, heal thyself' (Social History of Medicine, 9(1996), 1-30) to estimate the average duration of work-preventing sickness experienced by members of the medical profession in England in the 1860s as ...

"After an introduction touching on various biographical highlights, this paper summarizes a wide-ranging discussion with Richard Easterlin which occurred in the Autumn of 1996. We considered the Easterlin Hypothesis--its genesis and current status, together with Easterlin's views on attempts to develop measures of relative income--and then moved on to ¿The ...

Beginning in 1892, immigrants to the United States were subject to a medical inspection, created to restrict the entry of persons with a"loathsome or dangerous contagious" disease or mental defficiency. Ellis Island, which received over 10 million newcomers between 1900 and 1914, served as the largest ever medical screening facility. ...

During about 40 years of the struggle of Russian homeopaths to spread homeopathy in Russia failed. They had been convinced that all their efforts to introduce homeopathy into the state medical system similar to allopathy, through attracting physicians to homeopathy, proved unsuccessful. In the 1860s-70s, homeopaths had tried to attract ...

This article is part of a series covering the ever-expanding role of computers in the medical office and practice by Glenn L. Gordon, MD, FACIP. Dr. Gordon is Director, Center for Digestive and Liver Diseases, Clinical Instructor of Medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine, President of Audrain County ...

This essay presents an effort to incorporate the "environment" into critical medical anthropology. Rather than relying upon the multifactorial approach characteristic of medical ecology or biocultural approaches in medical anthropology, it urges critical medical anthropologists to turn to the burgeoning literature on eco-Marxism, eco-socialism, or political ecology in their efforts ...

The British Columbia Medical Association has established a Committee on Violence to look at the impact violence has on society and help find ways to educate physicians about how to identify, counsel and prevent violent behaviour. The issue is becoming more pressing as downsizing closes mental-health facilities, putting more potentially ...

It's been an adventurous life for James Gallagher, MD, from medical school in Ireland where he was a scrappy welterweight student boxer to one of the state's foremost cardiologists, and current president of the Wayne County Medical Society. Born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1932, the fifth in an ...

Attempts to explain "eating disorders" in contemporary western society have concentrated on aetiology at the expense of resolution. Most "recovered" anorectics, however, question medical definitions of "anorexia nervosa" and clinical criteria for recovery. This article refers to a study of 32 people at different stages of the recovery process, to ...

Physicians are one group of people who don't need to be reminded of the devastating effect of violence on our families, our health care system, and our society. That's why you are invited to help the county, state, and national medical society alliances SAVE Today...Stop America's Violence Everywhere. Governor Engler ...

Interoperability seems to be a major focal point of the activities within the Informatics Society in general, and the Medical Informatics society in particular. In both Europe and the USA standardization efforts are pursued in order to enable interoperability. However, even if the technical requirements are met, interoperability is sometimes ...

Taking as its point of departure the medicalization thesis and its limitations, this paper provides a critical discussion of certain more recent theoretical perspectives on life in contemporary society, and their relevance for understanding the relationship between modern medicine and the lay populace. In particular, attention is paid to the ...

The potential of medicine to intervene to prolong or shorten the life of those considered to be dying or of those whose life is rated as of little or even negative value has only recently surfaced. It is an issue likely to affect society and the normative social relationships which ...

The human body is unable to synthesise Vitamin C and a diet deficient in Vitamin C leads to scurvy. Scurvy may mimic other medical conditions, like bleeding diasthesis or deep vein thrombosis, leading to delay in diagnosis and treatment, thus prolonging sufferings of patients. Often, scurvy could have been diagnosed ...

Should the nation provide expensive care and scarce organs to convicted felons? We distinguish between two fields of justice: Medical Justice and Societal Justice. Although there is general acceptance within the medical profession that physicians may distribute limited treatments based solely on potential medical benefits without regard to nonmedical factors, ...

The Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, which entertains children in New York City hospitals, is compared with non-Western healers, especially shamans. There is not only superficial resemblance--weird costumes, music, sleight of hand, puppet/spirit helpers, and ventriloquism--but also similarity in the meanings and functions of their performances. Both clown and ...

OBJECTIVES: To enumerate some of the benefits of being a member in the American Urological Association (AUA) and to request support in promoting membership in our specialty society's parent organization (AUA). METHODS: The benefits of belonging to a medical specialty society are assessed by weighing the costs of membership (financial ...

There are numerous clinical conditions observed in persons with Down syndrome, as described above, which should be taken into consideration in the course of their medical care and management. If provided with optimal medical services, pursuing specific evaluations and examinations, with a focus on preventive aspects and fostering well being ...

Medicine is not only a cultural system of its own. It also performs specific roles in the broader culture of society at large. This article examines the role of medical arguments in the critique of "enthusiasm" on the eve of the Enlightenment. The enthusiasts, who claimed to prophesy and to ...

The American Society of Clinical Pathologists surveyed 395 members who represented the spectrum of anatomic pathology practice among the membership. The results of how respondents fix, section, process, and report radical prostatectomy specimens, transurethral prostatectomy specimens, and needle biopsy specimens is presented, with a commentary based on the current medical ...

The hard work of the first black physicians in New Jersey paved the way for future generations. Dr. Clarence Janifer, one such physician, challenged the organized medical profession in New Jersey. Dr. Janifer joined the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1916, and established his medical practice in Essex County.

This account concerns Alfred Ernest Maylard, 1855-1947, a surgeon of exceptional ability and a man with extraordinary energy and drive. He was appointed to the Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow, when it opened in 1890 and made an outstanding clinical and academic contribution, particularly in abdominal surgery. His organisational talents were remarkable ...

This is a literary portrait of Louise Eisenhardt, M.D., associate of Harvey Cushing, scholar, investigator, editor, teacher, and curator of the Brain Tumor Registry at Yale. She was a Charter Member of the Harvey Cushing Society which she served as President, long-term Secretary-Treasurer, and Historian. She achieved many "firsts" for ...

"Urination and Its Discontents" is an attempt to answer why various twentieth-century artists have made works that use or are about urination. Andy Warhol's act of "pissing" onto a canvas in his Oxidation Paintings is related to homosexual "sex clubs," but also to the iconoclasm of Mapplethorpe, Serrano, Duchamp, and ...

In March 1990, medical interchange between Japan and the Soviet Union began with a letter from the local health bureau of Khabarovsk. We visited Khabarovsk three times and Kamchatka once, and saw many hospitals and patients. Russian doctors of pediatrics visited Japan. Medical information was exchanged and discussed. The Japan-Russia ...