Attack of the Dead Men

Cotard’s syndrome is also known as the ‘walking corpse’ syndrome. It is a neuropsychiatric condition characterized by the delusional belief that one is dead, dying, rotting or nonexistent. Nihilistic beliefs range from involving particular body parts to including the entire body and even a denial that the self exists. The condition was first described by French neurologist Jules Cotard in 1880.

A real zombie attack happened during World War I. The battle was known as the ‘Attack of the Dead Men’. Russian soldiers defending Osoweic Fortress from the German army were bombarded with chlorine gas. The surviving Russians charged at the German forces despite coughing up their own blood and lung tissue. The frightening appearance of those advancing moribund Russians scared the German soldiers who turned and fled, some falling into their own traps.

Friday the 13th

In the early 1990s, a study was published in the British Medical Journal called “Is Friday the 13th bad for your health?”. The authors concluded that “Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52%. Staying at home is recommended.”

Bad Moon Rising

Pliny the Elder believed that a full Moon causes the brain to become “unnaturally moist” which results in madness and attacks of epilepsy. Our word “lunatic”, derived from Luna (the Moon), was used to describe epileptics and psychotics. He wouldn’t stand for werewolf stories, though. The Roman author scoffed at gullible Greeks who retold tales of lycanthropy. Instead, Pliny advised epileptics to keep an eye on the Moon and treat themselves with an elephant’s liver or camel brains. 

Two thousand years later, medical researchers are still investigating the link between the Moon and the behaviour of human beings (“The lunar effect”). I won’t bore anyone with references. Trust me on this: There is no relationship between the behaviour of the Moon and the behaviour of people. Even patients with clinical lycanthropy seem blissfully unaware of what the Moon is up to. Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychiatric condition where patients believe themselves capable of transforming into wolves. 

Beethoven’s musical Jawbone

Ludwig van Beethoven may have been stone deaf when he wrote his Ninth Symphony, but he certainly wasn’t tone-deaf. He could even hear through his jawbone!

Beethoven had begun experiencing hearing loss and tinnitus in his twenties. He tried to cope with his hearing loss by using an ear trumpet made by his friend, the German inventor and engineer, Johann Maelzel* but Beethoven would eventually have to depend on ‘conversation books’. These notebooks allowed his friends to write down what they wanted to tell him.

Legend has it that Beethoven could not hear the audience applaud the first performance of his Ninth Symphony. One of the soloists walked up to him and turned him around so that he could face the cheering audience.

There was also another way in which Beethoven adapted to his hearing loss. He used bone conduction instead of air conduction. He would clench a stick between his teeth and rest the other end on his piano keyboard which enabled him to hear vibrations through his jawbone.

Bone conduction accounts for how you perceive your own voice. You sound somewhat different to others than you do to yourself. An audience hears your voice because sound waves, conducted through the air, vibrate the human eardrum. Whenever you hear your own voice, you also hear the sonorous tones of vibrations that travel through your skull from your vocal cords. These private tones, only perceived by yourself, are deeper and more resonant. That is why, when you hear a recording of your own voice, you may be surprised by its disappointingly thin and higher-pitched quality.

 

*Maelzel became famous for inventing the metronome. In reality, he had copied a design by Dietrich Winkel. Maelzel was also known for touring with a mechanical chess player, The Turk. This chess robot beat all its opponents in the 18th and 19th centuries (including Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin). The Turk hoax was only fully exposed after Maelzel’s death by physicians Dr John Kearsley Mitchell and his son, Dr Silas Weir Mitchell.

Smoking the Devil’s Trumpet

The idea of treating asthmatic attacks with smoke inhalation came to Britain from India in the 1800s. Indian asthmatics were pipe-smoking Angel’s Trumpets (Datura ferox) to relieve their symptoms. Word got back to the English physician, Dr Sims, who adopted the practice. When the Brit’s supply of Angel’s Trumpets was exhausted, they used Devil’s Trumpets (Datura stramonium) instead. Stramonium became the expert’s choice for treating asthma. At the time, tobacco, opium and cannabis were also gaining popularity as both therapeutic and recreational agents. Our famous Canadian physician, William Osler, extolled the benefits of medicated cigarettes in 1901.

As medical knowledge advanced and smoking fell into disfavour, stramonium and other medicated cigarettes (including menthol) were rebranded as a deterrent for smoking. For a brief time, the medical press supported medicated cigarettes to treat smoking addiction.

Further irony ensued after cigarettes were implicated in lung cancer.

Before the 1950s, no-one smoked filter-tipped cigarettes. Tobacco companies then tried to make cigarettes healthier by adding filters to block carcinogenic particles. Kent cigarettes decided asbestos would be a smart choice for a cigarette filter. Today, most laypeople will be able to tell you that asbestos causes lung cancer. Instead of making cigarettes safer, Kent was making them deadlier.

Inevitably, the downfall of medicated cigarettes was brought about by sociocultural factors, not a medical epiphany. In the late 1960s, the Canadian medical press reported that asthmatic teens were abusing their stramonium cigarettes and powders (Asthmador was a powder that was burned like incense to inhale its fumes).

Asthmatic kids were crushing, mixing and ingesting their prescribed treatment to get a hallucinogenic high. Some of them ended up in the hospital or dead. Stramonium is very similar to belladonna (deadly nightshade). Interestingly, Dr Sims, the first guy to write about smoking Datura for asthma in the medical press, apparently died of an overdose of belladonna.

Today, you can’t use your prescribed puffer to get high anymore, but inhaled treatments continue to be the cornerstone of asthma management.

Link: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844275/]

One man’s trash is another man’s kidney

Dr Willem Kolff invented the first dialysis machine during WWII. He used orange juice cans; used auto parts; a clothes washing machine; saltwater; and sausage casings to build a functioning artificial kidney.

His first 15 patients died on the machine but, after persistent tinkering, he successfully treated a patient in 1945. The woman who he had revived from kidney failure, came out of her coma to utter the first words of her new chance at life, “I’m going to divorce my husband.”

While experimenting with his machine in wartime Netherlands, Dr Kolff also used his hospital to hide more than 800 people from the Nazis. Dr Willem Kolff had already helped set up the first blood bank in Europe. He went on to develop a membrane oxygenator for bypass surgery and the first artificial heart. “If a man can grow a heart,” he believed, “he can build one.”

Kolff’s artificial heart kept a dog alive for 90 minutes in 1957. Continued work on the project led him to help implant the first artificial heart into a person in 1982.

Restaurant of Mistaken Orders

Tim Horton’s frequently gets my drive-thru order wrong. It doesn’t bother me at all because the “Timmies surprise” adds a little randomness to my day, and I am not a fussy eater.

I think I would be an enthusiastic patron of the “Restaurant of Mistaken Orders” if I lived in Japan. At this particular eatery, visitors are told that servers “may, or may not, get your order right.” That is because patients with dementia staff the pop-up restaurant.

Kahlil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible.” Most people can engage in some form of work to maintain their self-esteem and relationship to society. Here in Canada, work is a responsibility of every citizen. Work contributes to personal dignity and self-respect; and to Canada’s prosperity. Total disability is rare.

Of course, moderation is best in all things. It boggles the mind that we pay so little attention to the therapeutic or pathogenic powers of employment. Now is a time when many people feel overwhelmed by job stress and toxic workspaces. The physician, Paracelsus, considered by some as ‘the father of toxicology’ advised us–long ago–that: “The dose makes the poison.”

Nevertheless, Capitalism leaves it up to the individual to seek balance.

According to data from the health ministry, more than 80 per cent of cancer or heart patients surveyed in Japan worked in some form while being hospitalized for treatment. Bear in mind that Japan is a country that officially recognizes work as a cause of death (karoshi means “overwork death” in Japanese). On the other extreme, hikikomori are a growing population of working-age individuals who withdraw from society and seek extreme degrees of isolation and confinement.

The unpalatable problem most of us face is that we didn’t get the social role we ordered from the menu. Life is a “Restaurant of Mistaken Orders” and, unfortunately, you are what you eat.

Blow it out your ear

I seriously doubt that you can inflate a balloon with your ear, but many of you may be able to perform another odd trick. Some people cannot help but cough upon sticking things in their ear.

The “Arnold’s ear-cough reflex” was named after a German professor of anatomy and physiology, Friedrich Arnold. He discovered a particular branch of the vagus nerve (vagus is Latin for “wandering” because it links several organs). This vagal branch, Arnold’s nerve, allows a person to sense touch in the ear. It also connects with nerves that sense touch in the throat. Here is where wires get crossed, and the brain gets confused. Your body mistakes something in your ear for something in your throat, triggering a cough reflex to expel the irritant.

Yes, the vagus nerve is also that pesky nerve that makes you gag when I stick a tongue depressor down your throat.

Vagus nerve stimulation is a treatment for epilepsy and depression. It involves using a pacemaker-like device that delivers electrical impulses to the vagus nerve. The most common side effects are hoarseness, throat pain and coughing.

As for using your ears to blow up balloons and blow out candles, Zhang Xijiang claims he can do just that. His YouTube video shows him snuffing out candles using a stethoscope. I’m sorry to say that I can’t believe his ears. I also can’t find any medical case studies where his claims were verified. If he ever feels like visiting the Canadian Prairies, I’d love to examine him. Maybe I’ll also invite Penn & Teller to that show. After all, it helps to get advice from specialists.

Clown Care

“Professional clown doctors began working in hospitals in 1986 under a program called the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, which was started by Michael Christensen in New York City. Patch Adams, considered the first hospital clown, started being a hospital clown in the 1970s. He was portrayed in the movie Patch Adams by Robin Williams, bringing attention to hospital clowning.”