The Three Christs

In medical school, I remember a professor of psychiatry saying, “You cannot talk someone out of psychosis.” I was reminded of this when I came across a case study called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

Social psychologist, Milton Rokeach, tried to cure three paranoid schizophrenics with messianic delusions. All three men believed themselves to be Jesus Christ. Rokeach introduced them and encouraged them to interact in Ypsilanti State Hospital. Each was confronted with the others’ conflicting views. Rokeach hoped that, by exposing the men to each other, they would reflect on, question, and correct their false beliefs.

The patients fought bitterly. In the end, none of them changed their minds. One patient now believed that the other two were dead, and were operated by “machines”. The other two thought their companions were simply “crazy” or mistaken.

Rokeach could not cure the three Christs. However, he later admitted that: “It did cure me of my godlike delusion that I could manipulate them out of their beliefs.”

Goldfinger(nail)

Sorry, our clinic cannot extract gold from your toenail clippings! When we collect nail clippings at the clinic, we send them for fungal culture only. The average 70 kilogram person contains a total mass of 0.2 milligrams of gold but, contrary to the myth, it is not concentrated in your toenails. There is a reason why we have tooth fairies but not toenail fairies. Unlike your toenails, that gold filling is worth its weight in gold.

Muddy water

An article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal took a stab at analyzing the mental illnesses of various characters described in “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories.

After all, Winnie is short for Winnipeg, the home town of Canadian soldier Harry Colebourn (*Winnipeg is Cree for muddy water*). Colebourn had bought a black bear cub that would become a mascot of his Canadian Army Reserve unit. During Colebourn’s deployment in WWI, Winnie was left in the care of the London Zoo (to which she was later donated). Christopher Robin Milne, son of author A.A. Milne, visited Winnie at the London Zoo and named his teddy after her.

The entertaining medical paper can be read through this link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80580/pdf/20001212s00009p1557.pdf

French Fries and Leprosy

Did you know the first french fries weren’t actually cooked in France? They were cooked in Greece.

Okay, that joke was lame. But if you want to hear how the truth is sillier than comedy, read on.

The French Parliament banned potatoes in 1748 because they believed potatoes caused leprosy. During that time, the French only used potatoes as hog feed.

France’s love affair with the potato would develop from the tireless efforts of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. Parmentier served as an army pharmacist for France in the Seven Years’ War when the Prussians captured him. In a Prussian prison, he was forced to eat potatoes. Upon his return to Paris, Parmentier proposed the potato as a nutritional source for dysenteric patients. Based on his work, in 1772, the Paris Faculty of Medicine proclaimed that potatoes were edible for humans. But Parmentier still wasn’t allowed to grow potatoes in his workplace garden at the Invalides hospital. He launched a series of publicity stunts including high-profile potato dinners and conspicuously surrounding his potato patch with armed guards. He instructed the guards to accept bribes and withdrew them at night so that people could easily steal his potatoes. Parmentier paved the way for the potato as a food source in France when famine struck in 1785.

Parmentier made other notable contributions too. While serving as the Inspector-General of the Health Service under Napoleon in 1805, he established the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign in France. He also invented the French dish, Hachis Parmentier, a variation of “Shepperd’s Pie”.

The UnderQuaker

With cereal products booming after WWII, the Quaker Oats Company needed to establish its nutritional dominance over competitors in the whole grain market. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Quaker sponsored an MIT study that fed mentally disabled children oatmeal and milk laced with radioactive iron and calcium. Nine boys were injected with radioactive calcium to study absorption. The doses involved were reportedly low, making it unlikely that the children came to harm, but parents and guardians were not fully informed about the experiments. The research furthered our understanding of calcium metabolism and laid the groundwork for future research on osteoporosis.

Medical Mojo

I’ve never eaten at Popeyes, but I’ve heard their annoying jingle, “Love That Chicken”. While it may not conform to my musical taste, a certain Dr. John wrote that jingle, and that amuses me. The New Orleans musician took his name from a voodoo healer who became wealthy by peddling herbal medicine and gris-gris. The eponymous Dr. John also told fortunes and practised folk magic known as rootwork/hoodoo.

Dr John, the voodoo king and mentor to voodoo queen Marie Laveau, was believed to have the ability to resuscitate dying patients. He played a significant role in generating the myth of zombies in Louisiana. He owned several slaves, some of whom were thought to be zombies.

“I’ve been traumaticalized.”– Dr John (Rock & Roll Hall
of Famer)

Prescription Booze

Christmas holidays were busy times at the doctor’s office in Canada after World War I. In 1920 alone, Ontario doctors wrote more than 650,000 prescriptions for alcohol!

Religious devotion and the Great War encouraged teetotalism as a moral duty, and nationalist sacrifice; whereas the Ontario Temperance Act enforced abstinence through the prohibition of alcohol in 1916.

But prayers, patriotism, and legal precepts could not stop patients from lawfully obtaining liquor by medical prescription.

Over a century later, I find myself in Lloydminster; A settlement founded on the twin principles of sobriety and piety. The British Barr Colonists followed Anglican clergyman, Isaac Barr, and Anglican bishop, George Exton Lloyd, to the Canadian prairies. In their determination to escape drunken debauchery and moral failing, they named their new colony after Lloyd and the church in an enduring portmanteau. I wonder how long it took for the first liquor store to open?

CPR Annie

Marie Tussaud learnt the art of wax sculpture from a physician, Philippe Curtius (1737–1794), a Swiss doctor who was skilled at illustrating anatomy using wax models. With Tussaud’s mother working as his housekeeper, Curtius took young Marie on as his apprentice. Madame Tussauds museum provides elaborate examples of how wax and plaster casts preserve facial features of the long dead for posterity. But there is more to the death mask than family mementoes or a fascination with celebrity status. For many, a death mask gave them the kiss of life. All doctors practice CPR on dummies. The most popular mannequin is called “CPR Annie” (Resusci Anne). Annie’s face is modelled on the death mask of an anonymous Parisian girl who drowned in the River Seine in the late 19th Century. The unknown woman of the Seine (“L’Inconnue de la Seine”) was taken to the Paris morgue and, with no signs of violence, speculation ran that her death resulted from suicide. The story goes that the morgue’s pathologist had a plaster cast made of her face because her enigmatic smile was inconsistent with the usual grotesqueness of drowned victims. The anonymous death mask soon found its way into the marketplace and became a sought-after art collectable. More recently, the famous face also found its way onto the modern CPR mannequin. The real story behind this death mask remains shrouded in mystery but, for doctors, the drowned Mona Lisa is “CPR Annie”. The most kissed face of all time.

Michael Jackson attended a CPR class in the 1980s. CPR trainees are taught to say “Annie, are you OK?” when checking the responsiveness of an unconscious victim. The training doll (“CPR Annie”) inspired Michael Jackson to write his timeless classic song: “Smooth Criminal”. His lyrics describe an imaginary version of events leading to the discovery of an unresponsive victim. The catchy chorus refrains, “Annie, are you OK?”

The Plantation Physician

The father of gynaecology, Dr J Marion Sims, is one of the most controversial figures in medicine. In 2018, New York City removed his statue from Central Park. Dr Sims was a “plantation physician”, who conducted his experimental operations on black slave women in the 19th century. He erroneously thought that neonatal tetanus resulted from the movement of a newborn’s skull bones during a prolonged birthing process. He tried to use a shoemaker’s awl to experimentally re-align infantile skull bones with consistently fatal results. He invented the precursor of the modern vaginal speculum by adapting a pewter spoon. He also performed the first successful operation for vesicovaginal fistula. Vesicovaginal fistula, a complication of obstructed childbirth, results in urinary leakage from the vagina.

Further links: https://tinyurl.com/y2ojq6cc