All over the internet, many people have come up with diagrams know as “histomaps.” These are long longitudinal diagrams that show the relative strength and power of different countries of the globe.
I am not linking to any of them because the print is too small and everyone wants to sell hard copies.
But I do have a vivid memory of the one on the wall of my sixth grade classroom. Read more on Coronavirus Testing Urgently Needed…
Filed under Autism, Healthcare reform, life, medicine, politics, Research, Uncategorized by on Apr 9th, 2020. Comment. 
I was nine or so when my classroom teacher at my “special school” for gifted children had a bunch of us at a “secret meeting” for which she had closed the front stage curtain on the auditorium stage and sat us all around her on the well-waxed stage.
“This year, we are going to perform Gilbert and Sullivan. We will be doing the ‘Pirates of Penzance’.” Read more on Giddy For Gilbert and Sullivan…
Filed under News, Uncategorized by on Jan 4th, 2018. Comment.
While I was training in psychiatry 30 years ago, the field was changing around me. The older psychoanalysts were forced — reluctantly — to add prescription of psychotropics to their practices or else patients would never make it to their door. Of course, they had little to no training in pharmacology and less interest so they didn’t usually know what they were doing. While I was ascending in the ranks of psychiatric trainees, the best and the brightest of us were ushered into special training in pharmacology research. I was (and probably still am) about as idealist and apolitical an up-and-coming psychiatrist that anyone could have invented. Read more on The Politics of Drug Development…
Filed under politics, prescription drugs, Psychiatrists, Uncategorized by on May 20th, 2017. Comment.
They call it pareidolia. It is all right if you never heard of it — you have probably experienced it. We don’t just love stories. Our brain seems to need them. We take what is inanimate and give it an identity, a spirit, a character, a story. In 1944 a couple of psychological researchers at Smith college showed an unimaginatively dull and insipid movie of black triangles and lines and such moving about to 34 “subjects,” probably unpaid Smith students (who may also have been emotionally or even sexually frustrated) when all but one of them described this 2 1/2 minute movie with amazing “humanity.” They saw scenarios like two male triangles keeping a female circle prisoner. Read more on Seeing Virgin Mary or Christ In Stains…
Filed under News, Psychology, Religion, Uncategorized by on Mar 22nd, 2017. Comment.
If you don’t at least occasionally check out my Facebook page, you might enjoy my latest update. Just a hint!
Filed under Uncategorized by on Nov 22nd, 2014. Comment.
If you think I bare my soul in this blog, then you would be surprised at how much further I can take – “to the next level” as they like to say – in my private, opt-in newsletter.
I don’t just reprint blog posts in the newsletter – or vice versa. I jump right in to the deep end.
I haven’t produced a newsletter recently – although in some promotional things on my various web page I have called it “weekly” (that’s stretching it). But I have a new one coming out tomorrow. Read more on What Changed When I Wasn’t Looking…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Oct 16th, 2014. Comment.
I first learned that I was a “receptacle personality” in Baltimore, Maryland. I was serving our fine country in the US Army Medical Corps as psychiatrist to the 82nd Airborne Division in Ft. Bragg. NC
There was some sort of a training group there that all of the other active duty psychiatrists seemed to have attended. The Army – in its wisdom – had decided to take me – a trained neurosurgeon – and make me a psychiatrist.
Our country needed me (in this position, at least) and I obeyed, like a good soldier. Read more on Meet Dr. Receptacle…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Sep 10th, 2014. Comment.
There’s a joke about a woman whose blood pressure was 180/90. She didn’t think she had reason to be concerned. After all, she argued, 180/90 is the mathematical equivalent of 2/1 and that doesn’t seem so high, does it?
I once treated a young man of color, obese and sad looking, whose numbers were close to this – 170/100. And I was not laughing.
This young man was schizophrenic for sure, but pretty harmless. Life had beaten him down enough that his jail experiences — assault, as directed by disembodied “voices” — had him so frightened that he would never do anything the voices said. Not now, not ever, and I believed him.
As a psychiatric physician, I always managed to get “vital signs” on all patients. That should not have been a battle, but it was. I did not understand nor relate to the medical assistants who took them. Why? 18 months training after high school and they had not been nice to me — not at all — criticizing my lunch and the fact they did not think I worked hard enough.
I was concerned when I saw a blood pressure of 170/100. Patient said he had been on some kind of medicine. The best I could get with one of my “naming medicines and seeing what it sounded like” was hydrochlorothiazide — maybe. And of course the relevant parts of the chart were missing, as was the case more than actually finding anything.
He said he had stopped his medications a couple of days before because they gave
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jun 20th, 2012. Comment.
Have you been told that you have high cholesterol? Or at least that you have to watch what you eat so you don’t get high cholesterol?
Of course you have! This is like a mantra – every health care professional and the writers who cover healthcare join in the party line. Everywhere you turn, it seems like everybody is on the “low-cholesterol” bandwagon.
Everybody? Hmm … (looking around) Well, there are exceptions.
Pardon me while I clear my throat and say in a loud, confident voice (and – might I add – a well-informed, scientifically and medically educated voice) – Bunk. Read more on ‘Tis The Season For Bad Dietary Advice…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Dec 2nd, 2011. Comment.