The Old English dictionary called the Epinal glossary, glossed the Latin word “bile”, a form of bilis, as “átr”, later spelt atter, meaning gall or bitterness. However, “atter” and “bile” […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: A better way to publish science
Journals have been the main way to publish scientific research for 400 years, and remarkably they still are despite 20 years of the World Wide Web. But it’s becoming increasingly […]
David Kerr: Don’t move fast and break things
New technology companies need the oxygen of someone else’s money to survive and grow, that’s how capitalism works. Here in California, multi-million dollar investments and eye-watering billion dollar company valuations […]
Desmond O’Neill: The Healing Touch
Although not as grand as the Museum Quarter of Hapsburg Vienna, Dublin has a proportionately rich concentration of museums, galleries, and Victorian heritage alongside Trinity College Dublin, our own mini […]
Neal Maskrey: The three elements of consultations
It’s the conference season and I seem to have ended up talking a lot with doctors about multimorbidity and polypharmacy. There’s pretty much universal agreement that there is too much […]
William Cayley: Continuity over efficiency
It has become fairly clearly established that a strong primary care system is associated with better overall health for a society and a more equitable distribution of health in the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Red fire
The Indo-European root ATR, which gave the Old English word atter, listed in the dictionary called the Epinal glossary, was not the only one that connoted fire. The word fire itself […]
Richard Smith: How public health moralists are promoting harm from tobacco and helping the tobacco industry
David Sweanor, a Canadian lawyer who has many times successfully sued the tobacco industry, believes that those who instinctively react against e-cigarettes on moral grounds are making a bad mistake. […]
The BMJ Today: China, philanthropy, statistics, Minerva, and what your patient is thinking
• In his acclaimed weekly blog, Richard Lehman highlights a cluster of articles on healthcare in China. Acute kidney injury seems to be an emerging problem in China as many traditional herbal […]
Richard Smith: How global health can help the NHS
Africa has 25% of the global health burden and 2% of the health workforce. In contrast, North America has 2% of the health burden but 25% of the health workforce. […]