Being a surgeon, a favorite Simpson’s quote is, “I don’t know why we don’t operate outside more often”. This short clip satirizes the effectiveness of traditional operating room sterile technique. Most people would consider the operating room the embodiment of sterility. The perception of surgical masks and hand washing provides confidence that this is the…
On August 03, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail on his maiden voyage with the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria to find the Northwest Passage and reach Asia from Europe by water. Columbus’ logic to sail west across the Atlantic instead of around Africa was reasonable, however his math was faulty in that he grossly underestimated…
Amongst the list of the most useful tools in human history, the knife is usually at the top. The knife is hypothesized to have existed for more than 2 million years, longer than modern humans have walked the Earth. It’s evolved, changing form, to meet our needs. Evidence of knives used in medicine may be…
Watching MLB games with my sons recently, they noticed how many baseballs were seemingly thrown away haphazardly. “That ball was used once, why is the pitcher getting a new ball?” Well, that answer partly has to do with neurosurgery. Nowadays, about 100-120 baseballs are used in every MLB game. (Each ball costs about $6) The…
Injuries are a natural part of sports, and back pain is not uncommon. A very specific back problem, spondylolysis, has been linked to athletics. A sports injury may initially begin as a stress reaction, then progress to a fracture of the pars interarticularis, which is the part of the bone connecting to the facet joints.…
On September 2nd, “The Dark Knight” (Matt Harvey) debuted his 2020 season with the Kansas City Royals. His return to the majors is a pretty remarkable recovery. Pitchers are probably the most injury-plagued players in baseball, but Harvey may have particularly poor “protoplasm”. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2015, which is a repair of…
On September 3rd, Oskar Lindblom returned to the Philadelphia Flyers lineup in Game 6 of the East conference semifinal. December 2019, Lindblom was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, which is a rare cancer of the bone. Usually, this is diagnosed in adolescents and young adults, and it is the second most common primary bone tumor in…
It would appear that evolutionarily, music became something we did spontaneously. Our ancestors, with very limited language, appreciated music. One of the differences between the developed brains of Homo sapiens and those of the great apes is the increase in area allocated to processing auditory information… the temporal lobe. This basic function may be a…
The size of one’s brain, or certain brain areas, has been extensively studied and implicated in relation to intelligence. It’s presumptuous, but bigger is always better… right? Wet brain weight at autopsy, as well as three-dimensional imaging studies, have suggested that larger brain size may correlate with excelling in academics and life achievements, even after…
“To see others suffer does one good” – Friedrich Nietzsche Schadenfreude, the enjoyment of another’s misfortune, first appeared in English writing in 1853. Other languages have similar phrases. The Japanese have the proverb, meshiuma- “The misfortunes of others taste like honey.” The French have, “joie maligne”. The Danish talk of, “skadefryd”. The Hebrew saying is,…