ENT History/Related leisure reading?

[mrbobian]

Hi All,

Just a neurotic ENT hopeful M2 here. Recently I've taken a liking to 30min or so of leisure reading before bed as a way to "spoon down" after a long day of studying. I try to keep it non-technical but like when the topic is somewhat medicine related in order to "keep my head in the game." (i.e. I'll get too distracted by reading a book about vacuum tube amps and will not want to study the following day.) Anyway, I'm curious if anyone has come across any interesting ENT history or related stories that are worth a read. Thanks in advance!

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[HighPriest]

http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/Virchows Mistake.htm

 

[HighPriest]

You might also try the memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, who died horribly from tonsillar cancer. He wrote them while he was dying, and they detail what it is like to have an untreated oropharyngeal malignancy. Incidentally, the memoirs actually pulled the family out of bankruptcy after his death.

 

[ZagDoc]

You might also try the memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, who died horribly from tonsillar cancer. He wrote them while he was dying, and they detail what it is like to have an untreated oropharyngeal malignancy. Incidentally, the memoirs actually pulled the family out of bankruptcy after his death.

Great historical anecdote, thanks for sharing, I love this kind of stuff.

 

[Pir8DeacDoc]

Great historical anecdote, thanks for sharing, I love this kind of stuff.

agreed. Oddly enough I never knew this. Thanks for sharing

 

[HighPriest]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22313921
Here's an article that talks about both Grant and Grover Cleveland's palatal cancer.

 

[HighPriest]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/faces-of-war-145799854/?no-ist
This is a smithsonian article that is somewhat of a cross-over between PRS and ENT due to it's association with facial reconstruction. WWI was the first industrialized war, but also considered one of the crucibles of facial reconstruction. Something about trench warfare and heads poking up into machine gun fire that made facial reconstruction a major part of medical care for returning soldiers. Gilles made his name reconstructing faces in the UK during this time, and this is when he came up with rotating soft tissue flaps. He eventually went on to be one of the founding surgeons for free tissue transfer. He was a PRS guy, but for whatever it is worth, he wanted to be an ENT initially.

 

[HighPriest]

The Virchow's Mistake article is extremely interesting, I think. I find the political aspects intriguing, especially considering the distrust that the Imperial family had for English physicians after Wilhelm II's Erb's palsy, which was blamed on a traumatic foreceps delivery which was also performed by an English physician. I'm not saying it started a war, but it did make one of the key players a bit suspicious of the Empire.

 

[HighPriest]

President Grant's death is fairly horrific. He was diagnosed with an oropharyngeal mass, but simply failed to follow up on it due to his physician being out of the country for a few months. By the time he returned, the mass was significantly larger and sloughing. They actually discussed the possibility of removing the mass surgically, but of course the mortality rate at that time was extremely high (most people died from the surgery or immediate recovery). I also find it interesting that the Virchow's Mistake article and the cancer in President Grant occurred around the same time (within 3 years of one another). The VM article makes it clear that the exact etiology of malignancy was very incompletely understood at that time - pathologists couldn't even agree upon which cell layer cancers came from - and biopsy for confirmation of a diagnosis was a relatively new concept. All these things we take for granted now.

 

[mrbobian]

Very cool stuff! Thanks for the links!