College Med Student

Ridiculous Remedies. The world is full of them and even to this day some of the worst are practiced by our own grandmothers. Thankfully my grandmother didn’t believe in any of these. Read the rest of this entry »

I know this sounds strange but the only “Med” show I can watch is Scrubs.

Mostly because its more of a fictional piece of the medical field.

But the popularity of shows like Bones, ER and House just mystify me.

I can’t get into them even though I feel like I should.

But I guess its kind of like a painter not wanting to watch Bob Ross paint happy little trees.

Most science papers written by students are effortless pieces of drivel only done to pass some sort of assignment, but then there are some that simply shine due to the topic of the paper.

Here are some of the most bizarre ones I could find:

1. Farting as a Defense Against Unspeakable Dread

(Dr. M. Sidoli; Washington DC; 1998)

“When feeling endangered, Peter used his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud”

According to it’s author, “this paper describes some features of the behaviour of a severely disturbed adopted latency boy. Peter was born premature, suffered several early hospitalizations and surgical operations, and at 2 months of age was removed from his mother’s care by Social Services for neglect and abandonment. When feeling endangered, Peter had developed a defensive olfactive container using his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together.”

2. Pressures Produced When Penguins Poo — Calculations on Avian Defecation

(V. Breno Meyer-Rochow and J. Gal; International University of Bremen and Lorand Eotvos University of Hungary; 2005)

“They get up, move to the edge of the nest, turn around, bend over… and shoot”

Ever wondered how far a penguin can fire waste from its anus? Wonder no more. Victor Breno Meyer-Rochow of International University, Bremen, and Jozsef Gal of Lorand Eotvos University, Hungary, used the basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin. Dr. Meyer-Rochow explained that the research began in 1993, when he led the first, and so far only, Jamaican expedition to the Antarctic. Later, while showing students pictures of faeces-lined penguin nests, he was asked how the elaborate displays were created. “They get up, move to the edge of the nest, turn around, bend over - and shoot,” he said. That’s when he got the idea to calculate the pressure produced by penguin poo.

3. Safe and Painless Manipulation of Penile Zipper Entrapment

(Satish Chandra Mishra; Charak Palika Hospital; 2005)

“A quick, simple and non-traumatic approach to penile zipper entrapment”

Author Satish Chandra Mishra, about his enlightening paper: “Entrapment of penile foreskin is quite a distressing situation for the child and the parents and can be a frustrating management problem. Any overzealous intervention would simply worsen the situation. Also, attempts to cut open the zip fastener are time taking and may not be either helpful or feasible in all the situations. The approach to the zipper manipulation should be quick, simple, non-traumatic and reproducible irrespective of the age of the child, mechanism and site of entrapment, presence of the local edema and zipper size or design.”

4. Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

(S. Ghirlanda, L. Jansson, M. Enquist; Stockholm University; 2002)

“The animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences”

Authors at the Stockholm University explain it: “We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice-versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals, and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences.”

5. The Effect of Country Music on Suicide

(S. Stack and J. Gundlach; Wayne State University and Auburn University; 1992)

“The greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate”

According to the authors, Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach, the paper “assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates.”

Usually I wouldn’t say disease can make the world a better place.

But this site I found gives pretty good examples of diseases (albeit fake ones) that would indeed make the world a better place.

Maybe better isn’t the word for it?

Funnier…definitely.

Thanks for stopping by at CollegeMedStudent.com, a site that is bound and determined to at least make you giggle or nod your head in relate-able experiences.

Everyone I know seems to have similar stories when dealing with the whole med school thing and what these stories usually have in common is that they are funny.

Everyone has heard about the “foreign object” in the x-ray or the accidentally removed testicle incident and this is the perfect place for telling these fantastic/disturbing stories.

So if you have one or would like to throw in your 2 cents, drop me a line at my email DeeOhSee@gmail.com (D-O-C,  get it? lol) or leave me a comment here.

I can’t wait to hear what everyone else has seen, witnessed or been through.