Tag: Canadian Medical Association Journal
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Zoobstetricoses
Ever since I was a little knicker I had a dog, or a cat, or both. It was part of growing up –playing with the dog in the park, avoiding the cat’s claws as it grabbed for the piece of wool dangling temptingly in front of it. And then there were the times sitting […]
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A Pink Elephant in the Room?
You could see her waiting in the wings, peeking around the curtain, anxious for her debut on the public stage. And what a buildup; the opening acts pretty well guaranteed her a receptive audience -one that would assume that anything less than a full symphonic orchestral introduction and a dais at centre stage would be […]
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Hurtful Scents
I realize that to comment on odour is to confront a two edged sword –none of us journeys without a scented trail- but apart from those occasional inadvertent and indelicate smells, the time has probably arrived when we should be wary of artifice. Well, at least in those areas where there is no escape; where […]
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Staying in Touch
In the endless dark of night, belief that there will be a morning is sometimes all that sustains us. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, as Alexander Pope declared in one of his essays -and that is occasionally all there is. When Medicine fails, the understandable temptation is to turn to alternatives; when inductive […]
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Vehicular Obstetrics
Here I am in New Zealand, land of narrow roads, one lane bridges, and at least for us North Americans, the necessity of switching our cultural allegiance from the right to the left hand side of the road. Personally, my greatest struggle is remembering to get into the car through the correct door. Everything seems […]
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Medicine and Ideology
Some things are more definitive than others –less ambiguous, more predictable. Reliable, in other words. They lend themselves to yes-no answers, right-wrong judgements, good-bad characteristics. And some people prefer to see the world in black and white like this. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for them; they crave cognitive closure in the opinion of Arie Kruglanski, a […]