by Ann Beach | Jul 25, 2024 | Medicine
The Mad Hatter We all remember the Mad Hatter, the character in Alice in Wonderland. Alice meets the Hatter having tea with the March hare and the Dormouse. He acts erratically, asking nonsense riddles, reciting ridiculous poetry, switching places at the table, biting...
by Ann Beach | Jul 7, 2024 | Medicine
Do you like your ice cream in a cone or a cup? If you were living in England in the 1880’s, your answer could be life-altering. Why? Ice cream was a popular summertime treat in England in the 1800s and was usually sold in a “penny lick”, a short thick glass cup....
by Ann Beach | Jun 17, 2024 | Medicine
I started practicing as a pediatrician in 1982 and retired in 2021. So, Google, which became commonly used around 2000, has been with me about half of my practice lifetime. Those two halves were startlingly different. Before Google, I gave new parents and...
by Ann Beach | Jun 17, 2024 | Medicine
Usually, my posts contain original writing, but I’m making an exception this time. I was recently blown away by an article in Atlas Obscura about making art with bacteria. Apparently pioneered by Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, bacteria art is a...
by Ann Beach | May 14, 2024 | Medicine
English is a funny language, an amalgam of many other languages, and always in evolution. Daily, we use words that make no sense, without even noticing it. Most of these misnomers made sense originally, and the words have hung on, even after our knowledge, or the...
by Ann Beach | May 5, 2024 | Medicine
Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ Let’s have a romp through some beliefs that have NO science to back them up. Burping babies- If you’ve ever been a parent or a babysitter,...