The Medical Thread

There's an old medical saying: "To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always." Yuan's got the idea.

Joey: As terrifying as ward work can be, I still prefer it to a desk job in the military. No Army for me, thanks.

edited 3rd Nov '12 5:56:12 PM by Pyrite

Strange is the power of mind over body. I heard that if baby isn't held enough, he or she could actually die because of some kind of negative material building up in their body and that they can't get rid of them themselves.

it's a good motto.

well I havn't heard anything about 'negative materials' but it is true that infants who haven't had skin to skin contact or 'cuddled'' have higher mortality rates and developmental disorders even when they get same degree of physical care. Pyrite I don't suppose you know any more?

@Euodiachloris:You're female? Are you sure? Maybe you should check with a doctor.

edited 4th Nov '12 1:11:23 AM by joeyjojo

I'll need to look up the literature for that. Also, *thwaps Joey* Respect your elders!

It's apparently called Somatosensory deprivation, or touch starvation. Seems to be a real thing, albeit not well-understood.

@Madrugada - Oh yeah, that's it.

Human body works very curiously. I am pretty sure some of you guys witnessed in variety of ways. Speaking of which...

Random question.

What are some facts about human body that makes you guys go "WTF?"

The fact that some evidence says the two parts of a brain can be minds on their own (or a watered-down version of this)?

...I am listening.

The fact that your sense of sight can completely overrule almost every other sense — that you can be caused to believe what you see over what you feel, hear, smell or taste.

^^^The famous examples being patients who have had their corpus callosum (the main connection between the left and right hemispheres) severed in epileptic treatment. It's not quite being minds of their own, but the symptoms are quite unusual. Unilateral neglect is also quite fascinating.

Unilateral neglect? Sounds fascinating. What is it?

Where brain damage causes the human brain (not senses, apparently) to ignore one side of the body in attention and awareness.

Unilateral neglect. Very fascinating.

It's when a patient has a severe lesion in the parietal-temporal-occipital cortex of the non-dominant hemisphere (a lesion of the dominant hemisphere usually results in an aphasia - a difficulty in speech). From then on, it's as if the contralateral (opposite to the non-dominant hemisphere, and almost always the left) side doesn't exist for that patient. They might be able to note that it's there, with great difficulty, if they concentrate - otherwise, it is ignored. If they attempt to copy a circle or clock, they will draw only the right half of it. If they have a plate of food in front of them, they might eat half of it and leave the other half, or rotate the plate until the untouched half is on the right-hand side, at which point they can notice it properly and eat from it. Male patients will shave only the right side of the face. It's really bizarre.

Edit: ninja'd.

edited 4th Nov '12 6:55:48 AM by Yuanchosaan

Neat.

I mean, it sounds like it's horrible to experience, but it's fascinating at the same time.

Which is, itself, something that I find endlessly interesting about us — that we can manage to simultaneously feel two pretty much diametrically-opposed ways about the same thing at the same time.

Funny thing is, it's very easy to confuse hemineglect with homonymous hemianopsia (loss of half your visual field) if you're rushing through your neurological exam. (You can see both in strokes, too.)

On a different subject: never name your kids Amelia or Alexia - or if you do, don't let them enter the healthcare profession.

edited 4th Nov '12 8:28:51 AM by Pyrite

I am totally naming my children Amelia and Alexia. I am sending them to medical school too.

If only I wasn't an Asian.

Blind sight: that fascinates me like nothing else.

Another condition that is both fascinating and scary: temporal lobe epilepsy. The sheer number of possible effects and implications are... chilling. And, in Van Gogh's possible (heck, sodding likely) case of it, quite beautiful, even when he was building to a possible attack.

A less psychological condition that's interesting: malaria. What? Various different parasites are both fascinating and disgusting by turns. And, I argue that however minute, malaria is parasitic in its lifestyle, as well as using parasites.

edited 4th Nov '12 10:41:37 AM by Euodiachloris

^Interesting thing about malaria: my father, like many Asians, has thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder. Because of the disease, he's protected against some strains of malaria. Thalassaemia occurs largely in areas with high rates of malaria, like Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean.

^^Give them a Korean name and a Western name. My family did that for me: I have English, Chinese and Vietnamese sets of names.

Sorry for the double-post, but my final theory exam for this year is tomorrow. Wish me luck!

G'luck, dear. You'll do fine.

Good luck I'm in exams too.

Good luck, Yuan. Break a pencil.

Good luck to both of you. Keep calm, and remember: perfect answers are rare. When in doubt, pick the answer that sounds the least wrong.

Best of luck, Yuan. I hope you murder the test, its children, and its grandchildren.