Author profile
George Szasz, CM, MD
Reading about the Cleveland Clinic’s predictions of medical innovations for 2019 got me thinking about the medical ideas and practices from the past 100 years that did not turn out well. One idea that did not... Read More
Humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter, or at least some amusement. People of all ages and cultures respond to humor of one kind or another. The word comes from the Latin for “body fluid” and its... Read More
I met her 66 years ago. I was in my fourth year of medicine and lived in the old North Vancouver hospital with two classmates. We wrote patients’ histories for next day’s surgeries—sometimes five or six tonsillectomies... Read More
Running records continue to be broken beyond expectations, but is there a limit to human speed? Foot racing became popular in England in the 17th century, when masters would wager on the race results of their footmen... Read More
One thing that endears me to the BCMJ is the editor’s page. DRR writes thoughtful, often funny comments about the world around us. His December editorial, “Sleep, when it no longer comes naturally,” was a bit of a... Read More
The development and commercialization arm of the Cleveland Clinic held its 16th annual Medical Innovations Summit in October 2018. The clinic’s scientists and physicians sifted through 100 nominations to select 10 up-... Read More
In 1828 it took 8 months for the young doctor William Fraser Tolmie (1812–1886) to sail from Scotland to the Pacific Northwest to assume his combined medical and fur-trading position with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Now... Read More
Can lobsters feel pain? The government of Switzerland seems to have decided that, yes, they can. It recently passed a law that lobsters have to be stunned or killed before being placed into boiling water. A news item... Read More
Recently Cam Levins from Black Creek, BC, crossed the finish line of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 25 seconds. He broke the previous record held by Canadian Jerome Drayton, set 43 years ago... Read More
This year the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It all started on 28 June 1914 with a sniper bullet that killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of... Read More