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medicine

Page history last edited by dm 15 years, 2 months ago

A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.

    Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose

    valuable scientific objectivity.

2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.

    Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the

    gentleness and reassurance he can get.

3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.

    Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.

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A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

4. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF THE TREATMENT FAILS TO BRING RELIEF.

    You must believe that your doctor has achieved a deep insight into

    the true nature of your illness, which transcends any mere permanent

    disability you may have experienced.

5. NEVER ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE IS DOING OR WHY HE IS DOING IT.

    It is presumptuous to assume that such profound matters could be

    explained in terms that you would understand.

6. SUBMIT TO NOVEL EXPERIMANTAL TREATMENT READILY.

    Though the surgery may not benefit you directly, the resulting

    research paper will surely be of widespread interest.

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A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.

    You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,

    to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.

8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.

    It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.

9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE

   OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.

    The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a

    sacred duty to protect him from exposure.

10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.

    This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.

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A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office.  "Was it true," the woman

inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest

of her life?"

    She was told that it was.  There was just a moment of silence before

the woman proceeded bravely on.  "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my

condition is.  This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".

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A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests.  "I have

some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news."  The bad news is

that you only have six weeks to live."

    "Oh, no," says the patient.  "What could possibly be worse than that?"

    "Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since

last Monday."

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A woman physician has made the statement that smoking is neither

physically defective nor morally degrading, and that nicotine, even

when indulged to in excess, is less harmful than excessive petting."

        -- Purdue Exponent, Jan 16, 1925

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A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth.  Afterwards, the doctor

came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."

    "Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.

    "Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how.  Your son

(we assume) was born with no body.  He only has a head."

    Well, the doctor was correct.  The Head was alive and well, though no

one knew how.  The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of

a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under

the circumstances.

    One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a

phone call from another doctor.  The doctor said, "I have recently perfected

an operation.  Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto

his head!"

    The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung

up.  She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful*

surprise for you!"

    "Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"

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After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,

claming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life

in a wheelchair.  Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his

bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable  of walking, the

judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.

    When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,

Miller was confronted by several executives.  "You're not getting away with

this, Miller," one said.  "We're going to watch you day and night.  If you

take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for

perjury.  Here's the money.  What do you intend to do with it?"

    "My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied.  "We'll go to

Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --

where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."

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After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that

brought tears to my eyes.  He said, "No hablo ingles."

        -- Ronnie Shakes

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Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

        -- Samuel Goldwyn

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Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential

ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common

cold.  You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking

cap you can find.  You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed,

then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap.  I've

never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.

        -- Peter Nelson

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    As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy

for more than 15 percent of their life span.  The words "I am sorry" and "I

am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary.  They will stab

you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your

friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying:

"Sure, I put your dog in the microwave.  But I feel *better* for doing it."

        -- Bruce Feirstein, "Nice Guys Sleep Alone"

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At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news

to the patients.  The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to

die in six months.  Go in and tell him."  The intern boldly walks into the

room, over to the man's bedisde and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"

The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot.  The doctor

grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron?

You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject.  Now this man in

213 has about a week to live.  Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me,

gently!"

    The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily

opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs

his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!"  "Wonderful day, no?  Say...

guess who's going to die soon!"

%

Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.

%

Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.

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Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long

walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They

then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy

health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,

not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find

only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the

others who have tried it.

        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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Cure the disease and kill the patient.

        -- Francis Bacon

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Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in laboratory rats.

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Dental health is next to mental health.

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Ever notice that the word "therapist" breaks down into "the rapist"?

Simple coincidence?

Maybe...

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For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life

to date.  He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now.  He has

the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly

realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet

and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object.

He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists

entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning

cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for

legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy

Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").

        -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"

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Fortune's Exercising Truths:

1:  Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic.  You don't.

2.  Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart.  So do heart attacks.

3.  Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.

4.  Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.

5.  No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done

    quietly at your desk at work.  People will suspect manic tendencies as

    you twitter around in your chair.

6.  Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.

7.  Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around

    for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard

    racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.

8.  Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups,

    followed by one throw-up.

9.  Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.

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[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology

Association, in Rome]:

The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and

of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring

from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means

of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of

individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event

maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable

stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political

party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide.

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God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....

        -- Ralph Moonen

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"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.

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Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

        -- Ingrid Bergman

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Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

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Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying

of nothing.

        -- Redd Foxx

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His ideas of first-aid stopped short of squirting soda water.

        -- P. G. Wodehouse

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Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929.

Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating

table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into

a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and

walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory

x-ray film.  In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.

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I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.

        -- Chauncey Depew

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I got the bill for my surgery.  Now I know what those doctors were

wearing masks for.

        -- James Boren

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    "I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."

    "Did you ever see a doctor?"

    "No, just spots."

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If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,

and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can

convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.

        -- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble"

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    If I kiss you, that is an psychological interaction.

    On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick,

that is also a psychological interaction.

    The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not

so friendly.

    The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.

        -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

%

If you look like your driver's license photo -- see a doctor.

If you look like your passport photo -- it's too late for a doctor.

%

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.

It produces a false impression.

        -- Oscar Wilde.

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It's no longer a question of staying healthy.  It's a question of finding

a sickness you like.

        -- Jackie Mason

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It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's

what you're taking for it...

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Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he

knows what it is.

%

Laetrile is the pits.

%

My doctorate's in Literature, but it seems like a pretty good pulse to me.

%

Neurotics build castles in the sky,

Psychotics live in them,

And psychiatrists collect the rent.

%

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

        -- Erma Bombeck

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New England Life, of course.  Why do you ask?

%

    page 46

...a report citing a study by Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers, of the Mount Sinai

Medical Center in New York, which compared two groups that were being used

to test the theory that ascorbic acid is a cold preventative.  "The group

on placebo who thought they were on ascorbic acid," says Dr. Chalmers,

"had fewer colds than the group on ascorbic acid who thought they were

on placebo."

    page 56

The placebo is proof that there is no real separation between mind and body.

Illness is always an interaction between both.  It can begin in the mind and

affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of

which are served by the same bloodstream.  Attempts to treat most mental

diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts

to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must

be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human

body functions.

        -- Norman Cousins,

        "Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient"

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Paralysis through analysis.

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Proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days, but left to itself,

a cold will hang on for a week.

        -- Darrell Huff

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Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents'

shortcomings.

        -- Laurence J. Peter, "Peter's Principles"

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Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself a therapy.

        -- Karl Kraus

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Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd.

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Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

        -- C. G. Jung

%

Psychology.  Mind over matter.  Mind under matter?  It doesn't matter.

Never mind.

%

Pushing 30 is exercise enough.

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Pushing 40 is exercise enough.

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Quit worrying about your health.  It'll go away.

        -- Robert Orben

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Sigmund's wife wore Freudian slips.

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Some people need a good imaginary cure for their painful imaginary ailment.

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Sometimes the best medicine is to stop taking something.

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Straw?  No, too stupid a fad.  I put soot on warts.

%

Stress has been pinpointed as a major cause of illness.  To avoid overload

and burnout, keep stress out of your life.  Give it to others instead.  Learn

the "Gaslight" treatment, the "Are you talking to me?" technique, and the

"Do you feel okay?  You look pale." approach.  Start with negotiation and

implication.  Advance to manipulation and humiliation.  Above all, relax

and have a nice day.

%

The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.

%

"... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."

        -- Dave Barry

%

"The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of

themselves," the old man said, no longer to me.  "But what will become

of the bicuspids?"

        -- The Old Man and his Bridge

%

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree

that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.

%

The real reason psychology is hard is that psychologists are trying to

do the impossible.

%

The reason they're called wisdom teeth is that the experience makes you wise.

%

The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.

%

The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to

deal with: death.

        -- Michael Phelps

%

The Vet Who Surprised A Cow

    In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary

surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow.  To investigate its internal

gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial

expression and struck a match.  The jet of flame set fire first to some

bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000.

The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to

the magistrates.  The cow escaped with shock.

        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

%

We have the flu.  I don't know if this particular strain has an official

name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu".  You

may have had it yourself.  The main symptom is that you wish you had another

setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION".

    Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a)

your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength.  Midway through the brushing

process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple

of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your

mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that

would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the

police would find you.

    You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.

        -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"

%

    "Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn.  Evelyn, will

you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the

psycho-prompter couch?"

    "Thank you, Red."

    "Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing

your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior

pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."

    "Yes, Red."

    "But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy

repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times.  Now,

at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off

your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900.  Now, any combination of

two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive

projections will put you out of the game.  Are you willing to go ahead?"

    "Yes, Red."

    "I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have

been checked for accuracy with her analyst.  Now, Evelyn, for $80,000

explain the failure of your three marriages."

    "Well, I--"

    "We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute.  First a word about our

product."

        -- Jules Feiffer

%

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't

be cured.

        -- Anton Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard"

%

Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long,

dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being

attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last

minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the

Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter.  We Americans live in a nation where the

medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe

25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in

seconds if we felt like it.

        -- Dave Barry, "Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead"

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