When I’m feeling a bit mellow or philosophical, I often wonder what things we’ll laugh about doing when we were young doctors. A colleague tells me that he was firmly instructed as a junior doctor that when taking aminophyline levels he shouldn’t smoke. The challenge is to spot what will seem equally baffling to my younger colleagues. I’ve had a bit of a hint of this, being employed at one of the institutions where Andrew Peet, first author on this paper works, and sat in wonder through some of his amazing presentations. In short, and in this (virtual) layperson’s terms, they are using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to peak inside the brain and look at what stuff is there. Well, you might say, that’s just MR. But when I say stuff, I don’t just mean the beautiful pictures we’re becoming so used to these days. I mean what it is made of. I mean looking inside and finding out what molecules are there. To quote their paper, I mean:

“N-acetyl aspartate, creatines, glutamate/glutamine, myo-inositol, cholines, … lactate and mobile fatty acids…”

Now, they’re very fascinated by brain tumours, and quite right too, and this paper obviously stands for that in its own right. But, if I take you back to my mellow or philosophical mood for just a moment, I take it as a bit of a jumping off point. I was always taken, in Star Trek The Next Generation, that the ship’s doctor, Beverly Crusher never actually took a history; she just pointed her instruments at the patient and said something like “Your serum molybdenum is low.” Now, obviously I’m not saying we won’t be taking histories. But I do have this visual image of having a drink or two on my retirement, sinking back in my comfy chair and saying to astonished young doctors “Do you know, in my day, if you wanted to measure someone’s blood sodium level, you actually had to take some of their blood from them…”

Well, you read it here first. Of course, what I’d really, really like is an Emergency Holographic Doctor.