Feeling a bit wound-up…feeling a bit frazzled by Friday?
Relax and unwind with some medical trivia…
Question 1
- Kehr’s sign is positive if which intra-abdominal viscus has been ruptured?
- The spleen.
- It is pain referred to the left shoulder tip.
- The spleen sits in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen under the diaphragm and lateral to the stomach. Left shoulder pain results when blood from an injured spleen irritates the diaphragm and creates referred pain [Reference]
Question 2
- What was the first rubber object ever discovered by a European?
- A rubber enema syringe
- - South America in 1743
Question 3
- What is a scybalum?
- A lump of hardened faeces
- The scybalum can cause stercoral perforation of the colon
Scout film showing multiple large fecalomas (A; arrows). CT scan showing free air (white arrow), inflammatory changes around the sigmoid colon, and large fecalomas (B; black arrow) [Reference]
Question 4
- What is the Texas Sharp Shooter phenomenon?
- The term refers to the story of the Texas sharpshooter who shoots holes in the side of a barn and then
drawss a bulls-eye around the bullet holes. - It is a logical fallacy of importance in epidemiology that occurs when information that has no relationship is interpreted or manipulated until it appears to have meaning.
- Examples include the attribution of cancers to various environmental effects, as described by Atul Gawande in ‘The Cancer Cluster Myth’ [PDF], and the wrongful conviction of Dutch nurse Lucia De Berk for a non-existent killing spree.
Question 5
- According to legend, which physician received letters that bore no address – they were simply mailed..
To the Greatest Physician in the World…
- No…it wasn’t you
- The Dutch physician and legendary teacher, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) (see Q2 of Pulmonary Puzzle #003)
This weeks questions were pretty easy, so here is a bonus questions from one of our specialist training registrars
PDF 
About Tharsa Thillainadesan
Immanuel Kant was a real real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the raising of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed…
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, with half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, “I drink therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed.
The answer is ‘Kant‘
“No absolute truths: truth is what the observer believes to be true”
Hard to get a question wrong with this philosophy…
I was thinking more about philosophy to help one survive the experience.
Hard to go past Nietzsche:
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
He also seemed to share Kant’s view at times:
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”