December 31, 2018 Monday

Bedtime Story 

Bloodletting Disgusted Hahnemann

Obviously one case report is no justification for coming to any definite conclusion and hence simply because leach-induced bloodletting did not work in my nurse’s case is no ground for dismissal of ayurveda as a system of medicine.

We shall tackle the efficacy of ayurveda as an alternative medical system much beloved of Hindus and a source of great (much sought after) pride after dealing with homeopathy in the nights to come.   

Samuel Hahnemann was perspicacious enough to come to the conclusion that bloodletting was obviously dissatisfactory to say the least.    

Dissatisfied with the prevailing system of medicine in 1780s (which effectively there was none) he candidly admitted that the medicine that he was trained to practice did more harm to the patients than good.

At least we owe him some measure of respect for accepting the bitter truth that all his time and effort spent on training as a physician was spent on something utterly useless and even dangerous:

“My sense of duty would not easily allow me to treat the unknown pathological state of my suffering brethren with these unknown medicines.

The thought of becoming in this way a murderer or malefactor towards the life of my fellow human beings was most terrible to me, so terrible and disturbing that I wholly gave up my practice in the first years of my married life and occupied myself solely with chemistry and writing.”

He completely discarded the horrendous system of bloodletting and tormented by guilt that doctors (including him) were actually harming the patients rather than treating them gave up practice of medicine.

And yet what he unleashed on to the world was an equally ineffective system of alternative medicine albeit not as dangerous as bloodletting.                 

  

In some sense it was progress as a transition was being made from a dangerous form of treatment to a much safer one albeit an equally ineffective one that was based on an extremely fickle observation of the effect Cinchona bark on malaria.

Do you know how the plant got this name?

It was the legendary Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy and the establisher of the binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming all species who named this genus as so in 1742.

He came to hear that the plant had cured the wife of a Spanish nobleman and captain general and Viceroy of Peru and the 4^th Count of Chinchón.

Chinchón today is a small town and municipality about 50 kilometers south east of Madrid in Spain.

When the nobleman was posted in Peru as the viceroy his wife Ana de Osario in 1638 was afflicted with tertian fever and she was given this bark to consume which cured her.

After her cure the very next year she returned to Europe and carried with her a large quantity of this bark and it is believed that this is how quinine got introduced into Europe.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

December 30, 2018 Sunday

Bedtime Story 

Bloodletting

Blood-letting was a treatment that was universally employed for almost all known diseases of those times.

If given some time to ponder over it would not be too difficult for you to come with a theory from where the practice of bloodletting was inspired from.

Think about bleeding to health and perhaps that might be a good enough hint.

If perhaps I add in the word “fertile woman” then I think the puzzle is solved.

Yes, the logic (if you can call it that) of bloodletting was modeled upon the menstruation that was known to man since time immemorial.

Menstruation was often associated with negativity and pollution and some thought that it was a process of the purging of feminine body of her “bad humors”.

If that was the god’s way of cleansing then we might as well emulate the process and reap our own rewards.

Let me, for the sake of posterity, record the list of illnesses that were curable by blood-letting as listed in one of the British medical text: 

The list of diseases treatable by bloodletting in the alphabetical order included acne, asthma, cancer, cholera, coma, convulsions, diabetes, epilepsy, gangrene, gout, herpes, indigestion, insanity, jaundice, leprosy, ophthalmia (an old term for eye inflammation), plaque, pneumonia, scurvy, small pox, stroke, tetanus and tuberculosis.   

This list is not comprehensive and includes at least a hundred more that I would grow tired of writing down.

What is most remarkable is not the sheer breath of the scope of the diseases that were curable with bloodletting.

Even more surprising is the fact that conditions where patient was hemorrhaging such as nosebleeds of various etiologies, excessive menstruation arising from various causes and bleeding from hemorrhoids were also to be treated by bloodletting.

If you think that we have come out of this madness you would be sadly mistaken.

Bloodletting, either surgically or with the help of leeches, is still an integral part of various alternative systems of medicines such as Indian Ayurveda, Unani and traditional Chinese system of medicine that are taken very seriously both my masses and by learned men and men highly placed in the society ranks.

My nurse who is suffering from a chronic form of hypertrophic Lichen Planus (or perhaps psoriasis as different dermatologists come to slightly different conclusions) was made to undergo bloodletting via leeches in multiple sittings.

Not only was there no remission of her dermal pathology after three sittings but on the other hand her systemic condition greatly worsened such that her hemoglobin went down drastically greatly weakening her so that eventually she landed up with blood transfusion.

It must be disclosed that this treatment was not being performed by a quack in his private clinic but in an Ayurvedic Medical College of repute in the heart of Bombay city by a team of doctors from its department.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

29 December Saturday

Bedtime Story 

Understanding Origins of Homeopathy 

Do you know what the foundational doctrine behind homeopathy is?

It is “simila similibus curentur” which is a Latin for “let similar things be taken care of by similar things” or to be more general (and vague) ‘like cures like’.

Even on translation this did not made sense to me.

On reading further about it I came to the understanding that the practitioners of homeopathy believe that if any substance found in nature on consumption can evoke the group of symptoms characteristic of a specific disease then it is liable to cure it as well.

What is the logic and rational behind this wonderful and very appealing idea I can’t say but then I have realized that in matters of faith lack of logic works in its favor.

Well let us forget about the treatment part of homeopathy and let us explore how this system explains origins and mechanisms of diseases.

The founder of this so called medical science, a chap by the name of Hahnemann, pinned the underlying cause of all diseases to be ‘miasms’.

Now what on earth are these miasms?

Well, I have no idea but the author calls it by an alternative name of “infectious principles” which perhaps he may be referring to microbes unknowingly.

I must admit that we must not be too hard on Hahnemann simply because at the time when he was a practicing physician (1781 in Mansfeld, Saxony) microbes were barely known as medically significant entities.

Yes, I accept that the Dutch businessman Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek had documented “animalcules” via his correspondences to the Royal Society starting from 1673.

But it was only much later in 1876 that Robert Koch experimentally established microorganism as the causality of infectious diseases.

The kind of medical procedures that Hahnemann was taught to treat diseases was bloodletting done either directly by physicians with the aid of unsterile sharp instruments or indirectly using leeches in the belief that toxic “humours” were being drained out in this process.

You would laugh at it today but believe me dear apes there is no shortage of humans who believe in such kind of toxins and their riddance from bodies as an important component of staying healthy (think of billions spent on health spas, steam saunas and massage parlors).      

Even though William Harvey disproved the efficacy and the basis of this treatment as early as in 1628 and yet even as late as in 1838 lecturers of the Royal College of Physicians continued to hold it in high esteem.

One of them wrote, “Blood-letting is a remedy which, when judiciously employed, it is hardly possible to eliminate too highly.”

Other physicians resisted discarding the idea saying “we are not prepared to discard therapies validated by both tradition and their own experience on account of somebody else’s numbers.”

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

December 28, 2018 Friday

Bedtime Story 

Counter-intuitive Phenomenon of Emergence

Emergence is an idea that is in some sense as discomforting (believers) as it is unacceptable to even scientists as it has an almost magical appeal.

It one of those extremely counter-intuitive discoveries of science that our average minds which evolved gradually over millions of years for mating and survival finds it hard to get around.

The question that any baffled ape would raise when proposed with the concept of emergence would be something analogous to this:

‘How can an object that is made up sum of parts eventually end up having properties not found in its parts?’

For instance, how can a pile of apples have properties beyond an apple except say being that many times heavier?

And yet emergence is all around us if observed carefully with a knowledgeable mind.

Emergence is a concept that manifests itself at not one terminal level but as several different levels of hierarchy of organization found in nature.

One of the basic tenet of emergence states that each level in the hierarchy of a complex organization (not necessarily biological) may have properties that are novel and not found in the “objects” that lie at the lower rungs of the hierarchy.

Not only are such properties not found in the lower levels but they are not relevant in any explanatory sense to the lower levels.

Emergence is very hard to predict since not only are they dependent on the number of subcomponents which has to be significantly large but also on their interactions and interconnectivity which has to be of certain pattern.

Merely large numbers of subunits is not sufficient enough condition for emergence; numbers are mandatory for sure but not sufficient.

Simply adding piles and piles of apples inside a storage room will not result in any kind of emergence but millions of water molecules capable of hydrogen bonding ends up creating the surface tension that is an unintended emergent phenomenon absent in the individual components of both the water molecules and hydrogen bonds.  

The smallest subunit of biological organization is considered to be the atoms and the largest to be the biosphere or the ecosphere.

You must keep in mind in that the concept of biological organization is not a notional one but is a fundamental premise on which both the medical research specifically but the whole of medicine generally rests upon.

This is the principle reason why as a medical doctor I have strong grievances against alternative systems of medicines since they are based on theories that are in direct contradiction to scientific principles.

Even if claims are made that in some instances “they work” their very foundations are in absolute contradictions to the basic laws of nature.

Take for instance homeopathy which is an extremely popular form of medicine among the masses mainly for its “no side-effect” profile.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

December 27, 2018 Thursday

Bedtime Story 

Some Insights to Mind of Carl Woese 

Last night I promised to return to some insights of Carl Woese and so we go into them straightaway:

“Yes, Darwin is back, but in the company of scientists who can see much further into the depths of biology than was possible heretofore.

It is no longer a “10,000 species of birds” view of evolution – evolution seen as a procession of forms.

The concern is now with the process of evolution itself.

I see the question of biological organization taking two prominent directions today.

The first is the evolution of the (proteinaceous) cellular organization, which includes sub-questions such as the evolution of the translation apparatus and the genetic code, and the origin and the nature of the hierarchies of control that fine-tune and precisely interrelate the panoply of cellular processes the constitute cells.

It also includes the question of the number of different basic cell types that exist on earth today: did all modern cells come from a single ancestral cellular organization?

The second major direction involves the nature of the global ecosystem.

Bacteria are the major organisms on this planet – in numbers, in total mass, in importance to the global balances.

Thus, it is microbial ecology, that is most in need of development (exactly what Craig Venter had the foresight for), both in terms of facts needed to understand it, and in terms of framework in which to interpret them.”

He goes on to add another important view of his regarding the role of biology (or perhaps more of microbiology considering the kind of reverence he had for the microbes) for us humans.

“What was formally recognized in physics needs now to be recognized in biology: science serves a dual function.

On the one hand it is society’s servant, attacking the applied problems posed by society.

On the other hand, it function’s as society’s teacher, helping the latter to understand its world and itself.

It is the latter function that is effectively missing today.”  

As the microbiologist Carl Woese has brought up the subject of biological organization so let me tell you little more about it as it is another one of my favorite subjects which is though taught generally in schools but not with the required emphasis that it deserves.

In schooling the idea of biological organization is more implied rather than stated specifically and emphatically.  

Biological organization is described in terms of hierarchy of levels of increasing complexities.

The “object” at each level is composed of all the matter described in its lower levels.

The other important concept in the story of biological organization is the concept of emergence.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

December 26, 2018 Wednesday

Bedtime Story 

Biological Organization

In his essay published in Current Biology Carl Woese in one of the paragraphs goes like this:

“The ‘important questions’ that 21^st century biology faces all stem from a single question, the nature and generation of biological organization.

(Biological organization is crucial to understanding life.

It refers to the hierarchy of complex biological structures and systems that define life using reductionist (explaining complexity with simplicities unlike religions and spiritualism that try to explain complexities with even more convoluted sophistry) approach.

Medical doctors are well aware (or at least should be) of it as their training starts from an assumption that they have a fair and general understanding of basic concepts of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology through their syllabi of higher secondary schooling and which is later tested through the form of competitive exams.

Many may argue about the deficiencies and drawbacks (pattern studies, intensive coaching and rote learning) of examination systems but I personally feel it is the best method to select the most deserving and intelligent brains available in the population pool. 

In some rare instances this method has failed some geniuses like we saw in the case of young Évariste Galois who failed to make it to École Polytechnique after two unsuccessful attempts at the entrance exams and perhaps in the case of Mon Ami who too failed to make it to one of the elite colleges of the Indian Institute of Technology.

But in general the system rarely fails to pick out the bright ones and allows anyone and everyone to have a shot at it.

 

Following this their medical training starts with biochemistry, histology, anatomy, and physiology that are totally and comprehensively non-clinical subjects but built upon the foundations of basic sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

The second tier of the medical training is the so called para-clinical subjects namely, pharmacology and pathology that begin to discuss the cellular and biochemical basis of diseases and pathologies and both of which are strongly built upon the foundations of the sciences named above.

It is only then the full-fledged training begins targeting the students to be made into clinicians and master them with the art of making diagnosis with skillful observation, history taking followed by physical examination.                 

This is, I believe, is accompanied with the tragic consequence that as the young budding doctor goes higher up the hierarchy of medical sciences turning into a superfine specialist he gradually begins to lose the sight of the fundamentals on which his whole edifice is anchored upon.

Such super specialists who are extremely good at their work, not surprisingly, may end up holding mumbo jumbo beliefs as there is so much noise around us (along with the rigid cultural indoctrination reinforcing itself all the times) that the true precious foundational knowledge get lost.

As a matter of fact, the foundational knowledge is seen only as something to exploit rather than as the truth itself.

Let us return to Woese now.)

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

December 25, 2018 Tuesday

Bedtime Story 

16S ribosomal RNA

Some claim that the word “genome” is a blend of the words “gene” and “chromosome” though that might not necessary be so from the point of view of its origin and derivation.

There already exists quite a few words that end with –ome and with –omics such as proteome and metabolomics and the suffix –ome could just be because of the trend in genetic nomenclature.

Either way it is not a matter of grave concern for us.

The genome of an organism can be sequenced and read in a way very similar to the way you would read this bedtime story written in Sanskrit needing the help of some translation on the way.

Traditional microbiology strongly encourages isolation and usage of genetic material of specifically cloned and cultivated organisms. 

In fact isolation of microbes is the key to the whole science of microbiology and study of bacteria.

Yet the truth is that not even 1% of the microbes that are found in most environments cannot be cultured in isolation with the tools that we have at present.

Once isolated then microbiologists may use 16S ribosomal RNA (or in short 16S rRNA) that is a component of 30S subunit of ribosomal RNA to classify and identify a bacterium.

16S rRNA method is now an established and powerful tool in bacterial taxonomic studies.

Not just that, but the sequencing of this gene of any microbe helps place the microbiologists a microbe’s right place in the evolutionary tree of life.

Such placing of individual species in the evolutionary tree of life based on its 16S rRNA genetic characteristics is a specialized science called phylogenetic study.

Why are the genes of 16S rRNA particularly good for the phylogenetic placement of animals?

This is so because during the course of millions of years of evolution this set of genes has shown a very gradual change.

This was shown by the American microbiologist Carl Woese (he passed away recently in 2012 suffering from complications of pancreatic cancer) who has probably made more contributions to microbiology in the twentieth century than anybody else.

It would surprise you that this man started his college education with bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics with “no scientific interest in plants and animals”.

I would like to share with you his perspective on biology that he published in the journal “Current Biology” in the year 2005”.

I think it is important that we see the beauty of biology through the eyes of evolution and this is exactly what Woese is trying to point out in the following passages.

He is also pointing out at the hierarchy inherent in biology as it lies quite higher up among the foundational sciences.  

We shall read Woese’s ideas in nights to come.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg