Reflections

An important article was published in the British Medical Journal on the 10th January. Authored by a group of French surgeons (the Cathay Group), this study examined the association between surgeons’ experience and their complication rates. In other words they wanted to gather some scientific evidence to prove or disprove the contention that the more experienced the surgeon, the less likely he is to have complications.It can be read here . To do this, they used the specific instance of thyroid surgery. This form of surgery has not substantially changed for several decades and it is associated with specific complications which can be fairly easily defined. These are, of course, injury to the laryngeal nerve and damage to the parathyroid glands both of which are dreaded complications after thyroid surgery. The study analysed 3574 thyroid operations done by 28 surgeons over a period of one year. They then used sophisticated statistical tools to examine the relation between the rate o...

The road down to Lava was as pleasant as it always is. The forests are as dense as ever and the road deserted except for a few vehicles toiling up the hill to Kalimpong. These are among the best birding sites in the world and many rare birds have been spotted here. Serious birdwatchers can check this out. About two km below Lava, an unmettaled track takes off into the forests. This road willl finally lead to several Rai villages but now we plan to stop at the 8 km level at the Neora Valley Jungle Camp. The camp is run by Help Tourism and has utilised local resources to build and run it. Several cottages made of local timber with all the modcons and huge glass windows that give breathtaking view of the mountains and a dining hall which has the same view all nestle along a hillside backing into the forest. Trails go off in all directions, into the forests, down to the Rai village from where this Camp gains sustenance, and the road such as it is to the waterfall that lies below. ...

Raj had asked me during my last visit to go to the Neora Valley Jungle camp. Unfortunately there was no time then, but this time when I was I Siliguri, he again repeated his recommendation. While I had no real plans to go there, I agreed. One reason was, of course, that the weather had been marvelous during the past couple of days in Siliguri and the Kanchenjunga was visible clearly from our flat. This view, of course was just a sliver, and a pale imitation of the real thing that one can see from the hills. We started at 7 AM on a clear day. The sky was blue, the air was crisp and the K was clear in the sky. Down the Sevoke Road we went in Ramesh’s Sumo into the Mahananda Forest. The Woods were lovely dark and deep as usual, but today we had another date, and so we sped on past the Mahananda Sanctuary past the Sevoke Bridge towards Kalimpong. We have been on this road countless times, but today we deviated from the main road to Sikkim to climb the 16 km to Mongpo. This was one spo...

There is a hoary old story about the surgeon and the scientist. The surgeon was jogging around a lake when he noticed a man drowning in the water. He dived in to save him and when he got him out he saw another man drowning. In he went again and as he came out he saw yet another man going under. At the same time he noticed a scientist standing on the bank of the lake deep in thought. “Why the hell don’t you do something instead of just standing there?” he shouted. “I am” answered the scientist. “I am trying to figure out who is throwing them into the water.” This story has many important implications. While some may see it as a condemnation of the doer who just rushes in to solve the problem without addressing the root cause, the story is not as simple as that. While somebody figures out the root cause and presumably also a method of fixing the problem, trained individuals are still needed to save them while all this research in going on. As a surgeon and also now hopefully a sci...

Written in 1928 this essay illustrates what I had said about the famous biologist in my last post . A sharp brain, humour and style makes this essay a wonerful read even 80 odd years on. The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form. Let us take the most obvious of possible cases, and consider a giant man sixty feet high—about the height of Giant Pope and Giant Pagan in the illustrated Pilgrim’s Progress o...

JBS Haldane with P C Mahalanobis. J B S Jaldane was one of the foremost biologists of the last century. He has been lovingly described as one of the “great Rascals of science.” Born to the aristocracy of Scotland, he also belonged to the aristocracy of science (he was the son of John Scott Haldane, a Scottish physiologist who taught in Oxford) . From a very early age he developed an interest in Biology and bred guinea pigs to demonstrate the truths of Mendelian Genetics. The story goes that he “often served as an experimental subject himself when he helped his father. In one childhood episode, the elder Haldane made him recite a long Shakespearean speech in the depths of a mine shaft to demonstrate the effects of rising gases. When the gasping boy finally fell to the floor, he found he could breathe the air there, a lesson that served him well in the trenches of World War I. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but volunteered to fight in the First World War. His experiences in the tr...

This is just to update you on the Obedient Wives Club. The club came out with a prospective best seller. Titled “Islamic Sex Fighting Against Jews To Return Islamic Sex To The World,”, and priced at RM 50 (approx Rs 800) this 115 page manual was designed to teach the Muslim woman to satisfy her husband so that he did not stray. Readers will remember that that one of the prime objectives of the club was to teach women to be “first class prostitutes”. The idea was that with such bounties at home, men would not frequent brothels or indulge in other adulterous relationships and this would be a huge blow for the happy family. Unfortunately, nobody I know has read a copy so that the distinctions between Jewish sex and the Islamic variety will remain hidden. The Club authorities have determined that only 10% of wives can satisfy their husbands and this book is an attempt to fill the 90% gap that remains. The Malaysian authorities, spoilsports as they are, banned the book. A spokesman for ...