My doctor father used to regularly set his trousers on fire. Born in 1924, he started smoking cigarettes as a teenager. He died of a smoking related cancer in 2003. […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Powers of ten
It’s appropriate that this blog, my hundredth under the “When I Use a Word” heading, a hundred being ten times ten, should appear in December, which, until the addition of […]
Daniel Sokol: The ethics of the on-call rota
A colleague is sick. Someone is needed to cover him tomorrow. There are no locums and no volunteers. Who should be selected? Few issues generate more passion and cause more […]
William Cayley: Measurement or action?
As our measurements and metrics in medicine proliferate and multiply, it is exceedingly tempting to think that our increased ability to measure correlates directly with an increased ability to care […]
Richard Smith: What if all the works of Democritus had survived and those of Aristotle been lost
Richard Feynman, the great physicist, conducted a thought experiment in which he asked what one statement would he save if all of scientific knowledge was lost. His answer: “All things […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Ḥanukkah at Christmas
This year the first day of the Jewish festival Ḥanukkah falls on the first day of Christmas. Call it “Chrismukkah”, if you like. [The letter Ḥ is pronounced like the […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Explosion? Usually barely a puff
There are about 10000 explosions in PubMed®. There are dust explosions, gas explosions, explosion injuries. In the last year, there have been 11 reports of electronic cigarette explosions. As I […]
Nick Hopkinson on Steve Biko, the NHS, and the mind of the oppressed
It would have been Steve Biko’s seventieth birthday this weekend. The anti-apartheid leader was beaten to death by the South African Police in a jail cell in 1977. His death […]
Sian M Griffiths: £1 housing scheme helps tackle health inequalities
Good housing is a prerequisite for good health. When he was constructing the welfare state, William Beveridge named squalor—which he said resulted from a shortage of good houses—as one of […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Wye speling matturs
Drug names are difficult to remember, pronounce, and spell. For example, which of the following, if any, is the correct spelling? • amitriptylin • amitryptiline • amitriptylline • amytriptyline • […]