At 3:37 am +0930 4/5/06, Oliver Frank wrote:
[...]I wonder whether this claim about swapping sides arose because
somebody who was seen as authoritative once said so, and that that
statement has been repeated ever since without examination,
challenge or attribution? I suspect that this has happened more
than once in medicine. For example, Sir Humphrey Seenalot states
that the major cause of haemorrhoids is constipation. Sir Humphrey
does not produce any evidence or research - he is an eminent
haemorrhoidologist who has treated a lot of people with haemorrhoids
and he just says so. He even has said so in his textbook of
haemorrhoids, which is the standard work in the area. For the next
fifty years, everybody else quotes this as a fact.
Sadly, that's the way of the world and human thought....
Most anatomy textbooks have loads of anatomical inaccuracies, because
most anatomy textbook writers write textbooks by reading other
people's textbooks and not from observation of real human anatomy.
Lots of things in Murtagh's book I disagree with, but he's a professor.
Many medical conditions are poorly understood and managed historically.
I saw a patient with probable polymyalgia rheumatica yesterday. Merck
Manual says "prevalence, etiology, and pathogenesis unknown". Hey but
we sound great when we know what it is!
One day, IT will enable us to analyse the collective wisdom of front
line clinicians and real patients to generate real data and better
science.
Ian.
--
Dr Ian R Cheong, BMedSc, FRACGP, GradDipCompSc, MBA(Exec)
Health Informatics Consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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