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An Old Doctor Reading Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine for the Last time             Racial Disparities in Health Care-Chapter 7 I entered medical school in 1973, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study ended in 1972. The professors who interviewed me to ascertain if I was of sound moral character to be a doctor were ignorant of or…

An Old Doctor Reading Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine for the Last time Chapter 6 Safety and Quality of Healthcare More on safety. There are many factors that have influenced improvement and safety in medicine but in my opinion the most important and effective were the routine autopsy and the predatory sleazy malpractice plaintive attorney.…

On Reading Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine for the Last time Chapter 6 Safety and Quality of Healthcare As a medical student in 1973 I believed the safety and quality of healthcare rested with the individual physician. If the physician was trained properly quality would be assured. I studied and exposed myself to as much…

On Reading Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine for the Last time Chapter 5 Healthcare Systems in Developed Countries Not too sure what this chapter has to do with becoming a master clinician. All I got from this was that healthcare is expensive and it seems all delivery systems are pretty screwed up in their own…

Chapter 3 Decision Making in Clinical Medicine This was a difficult chapter for me and made me recall my first reading of Harrison’s. I didn’t understand it on first read but I appreciate the significance and if I wasn’t a busy clinician, I could spend a lifetime studying this chapter as well as James Joyce’s…

Physical Examination page 2 “The patient must be examined from head to toe” That was true when we were medical students in 1973 and perhaps for fifteen years after but patients became wary of doctors and with some justification as evidenced by Larry Nassar or the late University of Michigan’s former team physician. During my…

My medical career started in 1973 and wow its now 2022. I recall reading Harrison’s for the first time over forty years ago and had to use Dorland’s medical dictionary every few words. Words like leukocytosis, uremia, salpingo oophorectomy, made me laugh at my ignorance. Eventually I learned their meaning and continue to relate and…

Almost one hundred years ago researchers Banting, Best, Collip, and Macleod isolated insulin for clinical use. As reported by Amanda Foreman in the WSJ in July 2021 the researchers sold their patent rights for one dollar because they thought insulin was too vital to be exploited. She reports that insulin today is so expensive that…

           Thirty years ago, I consulted on a young boy with a puzzling constellation of symptoms. He was fourteen years old and developed a poison ivy-like rash that covered his body.  He had blood in his urine indicating a disease of the kidneys. I diagnosed an ailment called Henoch-Schoenlein purpura (HSP) a kidney ailment found…

Just finished reading “The Great Influenza” by John Barry. “In 1918 the world population was 1.8 billion, and the pandemic killed 50-100 million people. Today the world population is 7.6 billion. A comparable death toll today would range from 150-425 million.” Sobering. As COVID-19 starts to come under control we must prepare for the next…