While riding in a boat off the North Queensland coast a 12 year-old boy was struck by a large fish that had catapulted itself out of the water.
Irukandji in moving pictures
April 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Forgetting the Unforgettable
April 8, 2009 By 2 Comments
A young woman sat quietly in her hospital bed. Beside her the morning sunlight bathed her newborn son, asleep through the chatter of the cicadas outside. The doctor smiled. The baby was perfectly formed. “What’s your baby’s name?”, asked the doctor. The new mother looked down silently. The cicadas chattered on. She looked up, “I [...]
The Breakfast Club
April 7, 2009 By 6 Comments
In “See For Yourself” I briefly mentioned my most memorable teacher, forensic pathologist Tim D. Koelmeyer. As a medical student attending autopsies, as well as coping with the sights, sounds, and smells of the autopsy room and the presence of a recently deceased corpse, I had my mind blown apart by the enigmatic Dr Koelmeyer, [...]
Insight
April 6, 2009 By 4 Comments
A middle-aged woman in the emergency department, speaking the day after an impulsive duloxetine overdose: “When I first started having problems I wanted to see a psychiatrist in the hope that I’d be diagnosed with something exotic and interesting like Tourette’s or Schizophrenia… actually what I really wanted to be was a manic depressive… Unfortunately, [...]
Google runs anti-vaccination ads
April 4, 2009 By 7 Comments
6minutes.com.au‘s Jared Reed recently highlighted the questionable nature of some the Google-sponsored health ads that have proliferated all over the Internet. In the comments section raged a slightly over-the-top arm wrestle between some anti-vaccinationists and a GP from Nowra… I chimed in with a comment: I generally try to avoid having battles of wits with [...]
Quackery Without Scruples
April 4, 2009 By 14 Comments
The film also provides an excellent introduction to the “double-blind randomised controlled trial” – the study design generally recognised in medical science as the “gold standard”, because it removes confounding factors and accounts for the placebo effect.
Traumatic Angioedema
April 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A 33 year old caucasian female presented to the emergency department following minor trauma to her upper lip.
Scorpionfish, Stonefish and Lionfish
April 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The family Scorpaenidae (Scorpionfish) contains around 45 genera and 380 species. Scorpionfishes have large, heavily ridged heads and venomous spines on their back and fins.
It was the little octopus
April 2, 2009 By 1 Comment
A 21 year-old sailor placed a small blue and yellow octopus on his shoulder while wading back to shore after spear-fishing with a friend. As he reached the beach he threw the little octopus into the sea
