My step-father gave me this incredibly geeky Medical History CD collection to keep me entertained while I was laid up with my knee ailment.

I didn't listen to it until this break, and while I think Dr. Sherwin Nuland comes off as haughty in the opening lecture, he rather grew on me by the end. I learned to like William Harvey, whom I'd previously falsely associated with an imaginary rabbit. I also learned that John Hunter performed the following experiment in trying to distinguish syphilis from gonorrhea from a co-infection: he paid a sailor to rub his infected, pus-leaking penis on a swab of cotton, then abraded his own penis with sandpaper and rubbed the cotton on it. Surprise: he came down with what looked like syphilis.

Now I'm not yet a trained epidemiologist, but it strikes me that this method only proves how these diseases are transmissible (and not even that, really. It just narrows it down to either mucous or blood), so still no way to know whether the sailor was infected with one or the other or both diseases. Also, his method of infection is just plain nasty.


I'm listening to:
Jesus and Mary Chain- Darklands