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Vesalius and friend

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

We love the Midwest....

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Heroes of Medicine and Science

Michael Shermer - professional skeptic; we need a lot more of these!
Sister Marie Celeste - Galileo's daughter
Charles Norris ~ chief medical examiner of the City of New York during the 1920s
Alexander von Humboldt - 18th century polymath and founder of the sicences of geology and ecology
Joseph Priestly - 18th century polymath who discovered OXYGEN!!
Catherine II, the Great, of Russia - received smallpox vaccine in 1773
Walter Reed - public health physician
Benjamin Spock - pediatrician and child health advocate
Florence Nightingale - public health nurse
Joseph Lister - public health physician
Louis Pasteur - microbiologist and germ theorist
Clara Barton - nurse and founder of the Red Cross
Albert Scweitzer - physician and humanitarian
Sister Ignacia - addiction nurse
Robert Walter - physician and mentor to SPS
Maxine Van Zandt - nurse extraordinaire
Benjamin Rush - physician and patriot
Michael Crichton - physician and writer
Ignaz Semmelweis - physician and innovative surgeon
John Snow - public health physician
Hippocrates - the "father" of medicine and author of the Oath
Jonas Salk - physician
Edward Jenner - public health physician
Elizabeth Blackwell - first woman licensed as a physician in the U.S.
Alexander Fleming - physician researcher & microbiologist
M.N. Smith-Peterson - physician and inventor of the artificial joint
Laveran & Ross - physicians who discovered the protist that causes malaria
Samuel Moline- head & neck surgeon and human being extraordinaire
James Lind - Romantic era physician and scientist
John Jeffries - Age of Wonder physician and balloonist
Wilhelm Roentgen - the "father" of biotech
John Udall - radiologist with a heart of gold
Ibn Sina - Islamic "Prince of Physicians" who helped preserve and expand on Greek medical science during the so-called Dark Ages of Western Europe; known in the West as Avicenna
Galen of Pergamum - "the most renowned medical writer in history"
Nicolaus Copernicus - physician and astronomer revolutionaire
Maimonides - medieval Jewish physician who wrote the first treatise on mind-body medicine
Mungo Park - Romantic era country doctor and African explorer
Marie Curie - discoverer of radium, the first element to be used in radiation therapy
Leonard Skeggs - inventor of the autoanalyzer
Thomas Beddoes - Romantic era physician who founded a free clinic and began the study medicine as a science
Humphry Davy - father of scientific literacy
William Lawrence -radical Enlightenment physician
Edith Cavell - British nurse and humanitarian
Fred Sopper - public health physician

Bookwoom Scale

Where appropriate, I will rate materials on this blog on a 5-worm scale.

5 worms = YOWZA! You gotta read this!
4 worms = Pretty darn good. You will like most of it.
3 worms = OK. Has its pages.
2 worms = Maybe, if you are a real afficionado/a of the subject.
1 worm = Don't bother.
0 worms = Should be burned.

The real book worm....

The real book worm....
I have always inagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges

About Me

Dr. Smith
Oak Park, Illinois, United States
Scott P. Smith, M.D., M.P.H., biology professor at DeVry University in Chicago...practices medicine in Africa as a volunteer internist and public health physician ...much-blessed husband of Janis...thankful father of three grown sons...proud grandad to Ransom Lu Scott and Aletheia Grace Smith, children of my eldest son Joshua W.D. and his lovely wife Audrey. I do stuff!
View my complete profile

So, what DO I watch?

I don't have a "real" TV but we do have a video disc player and small screen. This feature will present and comment on DVDs I have viewed recently or am in the process of viewing.

British mysteries--any kind

Dr. Who ~ I have started viewing this legendary BBC sci fi series from the beginning (1963). I am 1966!

Rome; I, Claudius

Nero Wolfe mysteries -- 50s style!

What am I reading?

I usually read anywhere from 3-5 books at a time, rotating depending on my mood (I have a lot of time to read since we don't own a TV). These books are mostly non-fiction (I do read well-written mysteries at bedtime ), generally in the areas of science or history. In this space I will list and review current or recently completed science trade books. This list will add to/complement The Compleat Science Teacher, which is posted on the Science Links feature. Your suggestions are appreciated.

Followers

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      • We love the Midwest....
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What I Am Reading

UPDATED September 2012
The Evolution of Desire, by David Buss
The possible WHYS fro the way humans approach mating. 4W
Science magazine, published by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 4.5 worms
~The premier general science journal. Readers need to be scientifically literate.
Mental Floss magazine 5 worms
~Fun and smart.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM)
4.5 worms
~Primarily for the specialist and well informed generalist. Some of the articles deal with issues and countries of which even scientifically literate individuals have never heard. Thanks to the Editor of this journal for her feedback! NOTE: The September 2010 issue was worth a half-worm all by itself! Great! 2012 UPDATE: Better & better! TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: I am a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, and damned proud of it!
American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) 3 worms
~Similar to the AJPM only much more esoteric.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
4 worms
~After the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (which I do not read because I am not and have NEVER BEEN A MEMBER of the AMA) and The Lancet (British), probably the most quoted source of medical news by the general media. It is accessible to nurses and the scientifically literate general public. Don't rely on the media--do your own research!
Annals of Internal Medicine 5 worms
~While written for physicians, this journal is accessible to the literate adult. The publisher, The American College of Physicians (of which I am a Fellow, and proud to be as well!), is committed to evidence-based medicine.

Abnormal proteins--the keys to all dysfunction

Abnormal proteins--the keys to all dysfunction

Great Scientific Quotes

"...a good scientist is never 'certain'." ~ Carlo Rovelli

The greatest impediment to scientific innovation is usually a conceptual lock, not a factual lack. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead. ~ Luther Burbank

Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not
religion. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think. ~ Albert Einstein

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes delight in proving their falseness.
~ Charles Darwin

There are four stages of [scientific] acceptance: 1) This is worthless nonsense; 2) This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; 3) This is true, but quite unimportant; and 4) I always said so.
~J.B.S. Haldane

Nothing is so fatal to the human mind as to suppose our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer.
~ Sir Humphry Davy

When we begin the study of any science, we are in the situation, respecting that science, similar to that of children...We ought to form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and immediate effect, of an experiment or observation...We should proceed from the known facts to the unknown. ~ Antoine Lavoisier

To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling....A mind that has once imbibed scientific enquiry has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplation.
~ Sir John Herschel

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
~King James VI of Scotland and I of England, on smoking

Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, "I am not bound to swear allegiance to the words of any master. " ~ Horace

Science Links

  • BioScience:Organisms from Molecules to the Environment--American Institute of Biological Sciences
  • The International Museum of Surgical Science
  • Society For Science & The Public
  • Ben Goldacre's BAD SCIENCE
  • Body Worlds
  • American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • This Is Why You're Fat
  • Annals of Internal Medicine
  • The New England Journal of Medicine
  • American Journal of Preventive Medicine
  • Obesity
  • Mental Floss
  • Science
  • American Museum of Natural History
  • Crohn's Disease
  • The Compleat Science Teacher
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