The fourth of Galen’s four fluid humours of the body, μέλαινα χολή, black bile, was associated, when in supposed excess, with a melancholic temperament, as defined in the OED: “Originally … […]
Month: November 2016
Amar Mashru: Passports, smokescreens, and the vanishing NHS budget
Chris Wormald, senior civil servant at the Department of Health, has suggested that patients should prove their eligibility for NHS care by showing their passport to receive treatment. The proposal […]
Jamie Murdoch: Nurse or non-clinician in the delivery of telephone triage?
The question of who should triage patients over the phone is critical to delivering safe and effective care and has become a contentious issue for healthcare systems. Belgium is currently […]
Trevor Plunkett: Dementia is not a disease
Recently I read in at least three daily newspapers that dementia is now the leading cause of death in the UK. It appears that such statements arise from figures supplied […]
Sara Hamilton: Pioneering open heart surgery
My brother died in 1964 at Guy’s Hospital. He was 15, I was 12. He had a congenital heart problem which I believe was a ventricular septal defect. He was […]
Desmond O’Neill: Technology and the medical humanities
One of the great challenges of progress in the medical humanities is that of time and space. Interested clinicians tend not to work in the arts blocks of universities, and […]
Planning a network for randomised trials in global surgery
Surgery has been called the “neglected stepchild” of global health. Of the surgical research that is done, virtually none of it is relevant to patients and surgeons in resource limited […]
Avril Danczak: When does risk factor management lead to harm?
“The operation was a success but the patient died.” This old jibe, usually aimed at surgeons taking a narrow technical view of the outcome, seems out of date now. There […]
Richard Smith: Working to make cholera a disease of the past
Until last year the Cholera Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, could have a thousand admissions a day before and after the monsoon. On a calm day now it still has hundreds. […]
The consequences of repealing and replacing Obamacare: A troublesome paradox
To the approval of millions of Americans, President-elect Donald J Trump campaigned on directing the US Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). As the dust settles […]