musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

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  • Gender and Stress

    Even the most ardent proponents of gender parity will admit that equality of opportunity does not imply equality of physiology. ‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal,’ as Aristotle said. Homogeneous –likeness, if you will- is not necessarily homogenous (a biological term meaning structurally similar due to common ancestry).…

    gozzter

    May 10, 2017
    Uncategorized
    BBC news, brain, child sexual abuse, Depression and Anxiety journal, Gender, gender parity, gyanecology, insula, insular cortex of brain, man-cold, National Center for PTSD, physiology, PTSD, Revisionism, sexual assault, Stanford University study, trauma, unconscious assumptions, US Department of Veteran’s Affairs, veterans, Vietnam veterans
  • A Flicker of Hope

    It’s interesting what catches our attention when we surf the apps on our smartphones nowadays. Some of the more provocative articles have dubious sources, of course, but with a little digging the original study can often be found and the claims checked. The problem, however, is that even these results need to be reproducible in…

    gozzter

    May 3, 2017
    Uncategorized
    Age, Alzheimer’s disease, BBC news, brain, cancer of the cervix, Flickering light therapy, gynaecologiy residents, gynaecology program, junior resident, memories, MIT, Nature, nurses, Pap smear, paranoid delusions, psychiatric ward, residency training, schizophrenia
  • Happily Ever After?

    I suppose we all revisit our childhoods from time to time –those memories have a special hold on us. But they are stories thick with varnish, and when analyzed too closely, soon fall apart in our hands like dreams. And yet, handled gently, stories are what we are –they are our names- and that we…

    gozzter

    April 26, 2017
    Uncategorized
    antenatal care, fairy tales, hair, hair loss in pregnancy, historical revisionism, male dominance, medieval Europe, medieval literature, Rapunzel, sexism, women as victims, women as villains
  • For my Pains, a World of Sighs

    What does pain look like? An intriguing question to be sure, but one I hadn’t even thought to ask until recently. Pain is one of those things that, like St. Augustine’s quandary over Time, presents a similar difficulty in defining. The International Association for the Study of Pain made a stab at it: ‘Pain is…

    gozzter

    April 19, 2017
    Uncategorized
    aboriginal, aboriginal children, art, CBC News, Centre for Pediatric Pain Research, Emily Dickinson, emotional pain, First Nations, International Association for the Study of Pain, IWK Hospital, John Sylliboy, Kahlil Gibran, Margot Latimer, Oscar Wilde, Pain, Physical pain, St. Augustine, us and them
  • Baa Baa Black Sheep…

    Okay, I’ll admit I’m intrigued by investigations that attempt to prove things the rest of us simply take for granted. Things that seem so obvious, that I wonder why they ever extracted them from the background for analysis. When you live in a forest, why would you single out a tree? Do babies do better…

    gozzter

    April 12, 2017
    Uncategorized
    baby, BBC news, Cambridge University, cloth monkey experiment, Dr. Victoria Leong, Harry Harlow, infant, mother, mother-baby interaction, nursery rhymes, Pacific wren
  • Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.

    What is a friend? I think I could parallel St. Augustine’s answer about Time: ‘What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.’ Friendship is such a universal concept, such an acknowledged need, I’m not sure why…

    gozzter

    April 5, 2017
    Uncategorized
    ‘like’, Cassandra, Facebook, Facebook friends, friend, friendship, Macbeth, New York Times article, semantic argument, social media, St. Augustine, Time, Unwelt
  • The Doors of Persuasion

    The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley -I loved that book; I read it when I was a teenager and was intrigued by the idea that there could be doors to abstractions as well as to rooms -doors to other areas, other places. Invisible portals that existed alongside more tangible things, and yet magical, somehow…

    gozzter

    March 29, 2017
    Uncategorized
    agency, Aldous Huxley, arcane knowledge, authority, autonomy, communication, Hope, listening, medical ethics, persuasion, placebo, pseudoscience, social creatures, society, The Doors of Perception, trust, Western medicine
  • Trust in the Tameness of a Wolf?

    Okay, enough is enough! All these years I have been an advocate of cultural relativism. Ethical parity when societal mores and folkways are accounted for. I still am a staunch defender of freedom of belief and societally derived variations from what might be seen as a Western norm, but there are times when I must…

    gozzter

    March 22, 2017
    Uncategorized
    blackmail, cultural relativism, ethical relativism, honour-bound cultures, Jeremiad, mobile phones, rape, sexual violence, shaming, social media, the Times of India, WhatsApp, youth, Youtube
  • Eeny Meeny

    I have always been fascinated by the idea of choice –the philosophy of choice. What does it mean to choose? Does the act of embracing one thing necessarily exclude the other, or merely prejudice it? Blemish it? Dishonour it? Alternatively, given an either/or situation, is it possible to throw the pair into a box and…

    gozzter

    March 15, 2017
    Uncategorized
    BBC news, choice, Gender, gender boundaries, Jane Goodall, names, non-binary gendering, philosophy of choice, set theory
  • An Even More Modest Proposal

    How many of you remember being presented with Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ in English 101? It was a not so subtle satire of 18th century British treatment of the Irish, in which he hyperbolically –and anonymously- suggested that the Irish might be able to ease their economic distress by selling their children for food…

    gozzter

    March 8, 2017
    Uncategorized
    accessibility of health care, barefoot doctors, Canadian health care, cultural safety, Emergency care, health care, Jonathan Swift, non-professional help, PBS, Social Service, sub-Saharan Africa, volunteer community health workers
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