What with Halloween mere days away, I thought it would be fun to dig up a little more horror history in the medical world. If you recall, In medical ghosties and ghoulies, I talked about the medical basis of the vampire and werewolf myths.

But it’s not always the fictional monsters that can be the scariest. Before 1832 there were not enough cadavers legitimately available for the study and teaching of anatomy in medical schools. The university of Edinburgh in scotland was renowned for sciences, as a result of the fact that they had access to the only legal supply of cadavers at the time, which came from executed criminals.

Of course, with law reform being what it was in the early 19th century, the number of executable offenses had begun to drop, thus lessening the supply of cadavers to only about 2 or 3 corpses per year for the entire university. As a means of comparison, my medical school offered up roughly 1 cadaver for every 6 people, all of which graciously donated their bodies to science.

This sudden demand (WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE MED STUDENTS!) attracted criminal elements who were willing to obtain “specimens” by any means. They came to be called resurrectionests, or body snatchers

Two of the more famous were burke and hare, low class gentleman who happened to bring a deceased tenant from their lodging house to a local surgeon for cash instead of burying him. This proved so profitable that burke and hare proceeded to kill off several other tenants, inventing or at least popularizing their method so much it later led to the rise of the word “burking” meaning to purposefully smother and compress the chest of a victim

This carried on for 17 more deaths until the two were finally found out when Knox, the surgeon buying the bodies and his students recognized one of the victims. It can be summed up in this jaunty little song
The ultimate result was the passage of the anatomy act of 1832, which expanded the venues from which med schools could obtain cadavers to unclaimed bodies, or allowed donation by the next of kin if in exchange for a decent burial

So the moral of the story is, too many murders for medicine in the past is the reason people are allowed to donate their body to science today!

Happy Halloween!

-on a side note, please check out my new food related blog, Chef M.D., located at http://chef-md.blogspot.com/

Merry Christmas, one and all

Last year, NORAD’s Santa tracking center answered 94,000 calls and responded to 10,000 e-mails. About 10.6 million visitors went to the Web site, which can be viewed in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Chinese.

NORAD’s holiday tradition can by traced to 1955, when a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears, Roebuck & Co. ad telling children of a phone number to talk to Santa. The number was one digit off, and the first child to get through reached the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD’s predecessor.

Col. Harry W. Shoup answered.

Shoup‘s daughter, Terri Van Keuren, said her dad, now 91, was surprised to hear that the little voice on the other end thought he was Santa.

“Dad thought, `What the heck? This must be some kind of code,’” said Van Keuren, 59.

Shoup, described by his daughter as “just a nut about Christmas,” didn’t want to break the boy’s heart, so he sounded a booming “Ho, ho, ho!” and pretended to be Santa Claus.

Enough calls followed that Shoup assigned an officer to answer them while the problem was fixed. But Shoup and the staff he was directing to “locate” Santa on radar ended up embracing the idea. NORAD picked up the tradition when it was formed 50 years ago.

First let me say, yes i know i have been lax in my posting. expect this to continue through interview season as i am willing to risk losing readership for the sake of getting a job (okay, i am totally not, but at least this way i can pretend its my choice when you all go wandering off to greener pastures who actually update more than once a fortnight)

Anyway, I have a special relationship with christmas…namely i don’t like it. More accurately, I like it, but i dislike having to do anything about it. And yet every year I am the one forced to cram holiday cheer down the throats of my family.

There is a good reason for this. Several years ago, my father passed away (for those of you saying sorry, unless you killed him personally, there is nothing to apologize for. And if you did, rest assured, when my ninja training is complete, your days are numbered) Anyhoo, prior to this, christmas was the favorite holiday of my parents. They would be those people lining up in july to pick up the newest hallmark ornaments, flipping through the catalogs asking my brother and I what ornaments we should add to the tree this year. Our yearly 12 foot tree that still couldnt contain the roughly 8 or 9 boxes full of holiday crap we have accumulated over the years. Not including the ones with the house decorations and the stuffed animals.

Some of my earliest (and fond) christmast memories are of my dad cursing as he purchased and set up the tree, inveneting new curses as he strung it with lights and cursing in languages that dont even exist while he tried to set up the motion ornaments. All while xmas music was playing. Then my brother and I would run in, hang up the 10-12 ornaments we actually looked forward to as a family, then quickly return to our rooms for video games or whatever we did at that age.

For all his anger at setting up the holiday, my father, who had grown up jewish, loved christmas and its associated festivities. His enjoyment made the holiday fresh for my mother all over again. When he died, she no longer cared about throwing her holiday party or setting up a tree or any of the associated rigamarole.

I let that go by for one year.

Then when I flew back i said, alright, lets get a darned tree this year. Its traditional, its appropriate its something or other. Which means driving to every single tree place in the greater los angeles area, inspecting every tree from top to bottom just to pick one from the first place we went (every year-it’s UNCANNY) not to mention securing it to the car, dragging it in and setting it up in the stand with the sometimes help of my brother.

Oh and course there is the obligatory moving of furniture and tree with the “little left, little more, little right, too much, forward, hold that for a moment” running commentary. So i understood my dad’s cursing from that point.

Then I have to string the lights, which first entails untangling them, checking which ones work, and what bulbs have died, stringing the whole tree only to find at the last moment i did it backwards so there is no plug at the end and I have to restart. So i begin inventing new curses, mostly as myself, some at the holidays. Then comes unplugging invidual bulbs from the light strands and plugging in the motion ornaments…finding branches to support these gargantuan ornaments which seem to never fit the light strands made today, only the slowly dying ones from 20 years ago…and along comes curses in languages so dark they would burn your ears off and render you sterile to hear them aloud

Oh yeah, and while this is going on, my mom still plays xmas music from the other room (which i really dont like. honestly with the exception of the 2 days preceding xmas, i dont ever want to hear xmas music) and my brother is still off doing whatever it is he does at this age until its time to put on his ornaments. For some reason we always listen too A Charlie Brown Christmas, which has to be the most depressing Christmas music of all time. That little bald kid cannot catch a break, and the whole album sounds like someone just beat him up and stole his lunch money. And its probably me.

So why do I fight every year to have my mom get a tree and send out invites for her own holiday party, as well as try to coordinate my own xmukkah party? Why do this when it does nothing because cause me unneccesary grief?

After all these years I finally understand my fathers love-hate relationship with xmas. We are going to come together as a family and enjoy ourselves if I have to beat the holiday spirit into all of you personally.

why?

because it’s the holidays, goddamit. And you are going to have fun and smile until it kills one of us.

Back from my food coma at last, and with all the pictures off the camera and on to the computer, I can finally tell you all the story of Thanksgiving. Well, the one I attended anyway. In an effort not to utterly destroy slow-loading times, I will endeavor to break this into multiple parts

This year marked a fairly special thanksgiving, as it is the final year of med school, and come july, the friends I have spent the last 5 years with will be dispersed to the four corners of the states, and some may even go to Canada, America’s hat. So we wanted to step up our game and a few of us decided to throw a gourmet meal, complete with endangered species centerpiece. But more on that later…first, lets introduce the cast of characters.

This is table. Table helped out throughout the day by storing supplies, acting as a prep surface, and eventually holding the finished product of everyone present. Thanks table!

Now on to introduce the real people who made the meal what it was in every sense of the word

Wendy, a fellow capoeirista from college turned tooth fairy dental student, mixmaster of potatoes
   
Ritika, chief decorator and baker of pie

Tony, Thai Knife-wielding fry cook and first assist on turkey preparation. Also the host for this years shindig.

Yours truly, the designated photographer for the majority of the shots, along with stuffing imagineer, and dolma creator, bringing the ethnic touch to this American holiday.

Before I continue, I should mention we had all arrived at Tony’s the night before, and spent the entire day cooking at his place. This means breakfast too

That’s right, homemade egg mcmuffins with both real and fakin bacon

Cheers! On the right, the mysterious member of the party is Jayan, mastermind of the menu and tsar of turkey.
Onward to preparation!

The first rule of this Thanksgiving was that everything had to be made from scratch…no half assing. As sultan of stuffing, I opted for a ciabatta and foccacia loaf. Here is the ciabatta freshly cut to prove there was no cheating
Note to those at home. Cutting bread into one inch cubes is more difficult than the cooking shows make it look, even with a bread knife.

French Freedom Fries are a classic americana dish, and Tony set to work on carving them with a vengeance

Of course, while we were prepping the food, Table was getting all made up for later

Table with Chief Decorator Ritika

This is an artsy shot. You will notice more of these as the participants begin to imbibe more alcohol over the course of the day

Table’s kid brother wanted in on the act


Seasonings to be stuffed in the turkey (more on that in a moment)


In keeping with our gourmet Thanksgiving, this year’s bird was a heirloom turkey. Heirloom or heritage turkeys are a variety of domestic turkey which retains characteristics no longer present in the mass produced poultry raised for consumption today

With the advent of factory farming turkeys were selectively bred for increasingly larger size, focusing especially on the production of breast meat. Beginning in the 1920s broad-breasted fowl began to replace all other types of turkey in commercial production.

The goal in turkey farming became the production of the maximum amount of breast meat at the lowest possible cost. As a result of this selective breeding, 70% of the weight of mass market turkeys is in their breast. Consequently, the birds are so heavy that they are completely incapable of reproducing without artifical insemination and they reach such extreme weights so quickly their overall development fails to keep pace with their rapidly accruing muscle mass, resulting in severe immune system, cardiac, respiratory and leg problems

Unlike turkeys bred for industrial agriculture, heritage turkeys can do the wild thing without human intervention, have a relatively long lifespan and a much slower growth rate. Chefs, farmers and food critics contend that heritage turkey meat tastes better. Despite increasing interest in heritage turkeys, they are still in the minority, and most heritage breeds are endangered in some respect. So we ate an endangered species. GO US

And now that I have taken a moment to educate you, I shall remind you of our immaturity

Yes, we gave each other turkey flavored booster shots.

And with the bird trussed up like a BDSM fetishist, we began injecting it with the true essence of flavor!

Meanwhile, table was just about done.

More to come next post, loyal viewers!

“Crystal water turns to dark 
Where ere it’s presence leaves it’s mark 
And boiling currents pound like drums 
When something wicked this way comes…

A presence dark invades the fair 
And gives the horses ample scare 
Chaos rains and panic fills the air 
When something wicked this way comes… 

Ill winds mark it’s fearsome flight, 
And autumn branches creak with fright. 
The landscape turns to ashen crumbs, 
When something wicked this way comes… “

The above is an excerpt from Ray Bradbury’s poem, Something Wicked this way Comes, and one of my favorite Halloween type poems. I have to say, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays because it is one of the few times a year that even grown ups are allowed to play lets pretend, and scare ourselves silly.

And part of those horror tales we used to tell ourselves as kids involved vampires and werewolves and zombies, the monsters of lore. But did they really exist? And if not, who came up with the idea? Well, too much studying for boards has enabled me to dig up this fascinating little tidbit about a disease called Porphyria Cutanea Tarda

Porphyrins are used in the creation of the 4 porphyrin rings in your hemoglobin (the part of the red blood cell that holds the iron). Certain diseases, among them PCT affect these rings. PCT primarily causes skin problems such as blisters that appear on sun exposed areas of the body such as the hands and face. Even after minor trauma like a cut, the skin in these area can peel or blister.

In addition, people with PCT may also have darkening and thickening of the skin, as well as increased hair growth

Hmm…is this starting to resemble any monsters of old yet?

Thats right, The very first werewolves of european folklore may have been none other than folks with a genetic condition. Of course, what were werewolves without vampires? In another extremely rare form of the disorder called congenital erythopoietic porphyria, the teeth can be stained a reddish brown due to the buildup of pigments

The symptoms of PCT can be alleviated by avoiding sunlight, since exposure to such light severely aggravates the symptoms of the porphyrias.


Along with avoidance of sunlight, since many of the porphyrias involve a deficiency of red blood cells, affected patients appear very pale and may require repeated blood transfusions.

Of course people in the old country didnt have the benefit of modern medical science (or google image search) and given that these are fairly rare conditions it is no wonder that the townsfolk believed monsters lives among them. And that is without even getting into the parallels between epilepsy and demon possesion, or zombies and prion diseases and voodo. But all things considered, the human body is pretty darn amazing, dont you think?

Until the next study break folks…

-Almost Dr J.

“Flowers bloom as black as night 
Removing color from your sight 
Nightmarish vines block your way 
Thorns reach out to catch their prey 

And by the pricking of your thumbs 
Realize that their poison numbs 
From frightful blooms, rank odors seep 
Bats & beasties fly & creep 

‘Cross this evil land, ill winds blow 
Despite the darkness, mushrooms glow 
All will rot & decompose 
For something wicked this way grows…“

Now, Pesach, or
Passover, is the holiday via which we celebrate the Exodus of the Jews
from bondage in Egypt
which by the way comes only a week before greek easter!

Here is my friend Kimmy’s interpretation of Passover, which is hilarious

and here is mine:

GOD: The Egypt is everywhere. It is
all around us. Even now, in this very desert. You can see it when you
look out your hut’s door or when you go to the market. You can feel it
when you build a pyramid … when you don’t go to the temple of Ra …
when you don’t get paid for your labors.

Moses: What truth?

GOD:
That you are a slave, Moses. Like everyone else you were born into
bondage. Into a prison of sand that gets into your sandals and your
robe and your underwear. A prison for your people.

Then Moses learned how to fly and had crazy martial arts fights with Pharoah Smith. That’s totally how it happened.

For those of
you unfamiliar with Passover, the operative element of the holiday is
that Jews spend eight days not eating any food with yeast in it. That may
not sound like a lot, but yeast is in everything. For starters,
that whole bottom level of the Food Pyramid (hah!) is gone. See what happens when Jews leave? PYRAMIDS COLLAPSE!

Trick or treat.  Smell my feet. 
Give me something good to eat.
If you don’t, I don’t care.  I’ll pull down your underwear.

I wonder who was the first kid to ever
recite this.  And did he or she ever get any candy because of it? 
And if not, did he or she have to follow through with the threat and actually
de-pants the candy miser?  And wouldn’t that actually be sexual
assault?  Why would a kid risk hard jail time for some stupid candy?

Happy Halloween All, pics to come (yes yes, we have all heard it before i know)

-J