If you take any physician… well, any one older than about 50, and ask them: “give me the top three reasons you went into practicing medicine” an answer of “I like to teach” will be somewhere on the list.
[And, NO, “so we can stick people with sharp things” isn’t on the list. Contrary to what you may think, that’s rarely all that much fun.]
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This post will finish our nostalgic wanderings through the “Numbered Diseases of childhood,” which we’ve been undertaking for several weeks. We are finally at SIXTH disease.
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Remember a couple-three weeks ago, when we started this little vintage trek through “the Numbered Diseases of childhood”, I sort of poked fun at the new-fangled-kid doc who sat in the back row and thought that a “pox” was a “rash”?
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We’ll continue our chats about “the Numbered Diseases of childhood” by discussing today FOURTH Disease and the unique circumstances about this number.
You remember from our previous discussions that the physicians in 1905 tried to streamline all the names of the rash-causing diseases by giving them numbers, one through six – oh, for the days!
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This is the fourth of our chats about “the Numbered Diseases of childhood” proposed in 1905 to list all the (then known) diseases which caused rashes and were killing off a sizeable portion of the population each year. Today we’re on ‘ol “Number Three” – Rubella!
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Frankly, the “Numbered Diseases” were just a touch before my time; but, that only means that none of the actual textbooks I used still called them by that name NOT that I haven’t cared for patients with that disease – because I have… lots of ’em!
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In 1905 pediatricians made a valiant attempt to simplify the medical nomenclature by giving the then known six diseases which caused rashes numbers instead of cumbersome, and sometimes embarrassing names. We spoke about the Numbered Diseases of Childhood in a previous article.
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About the last time I can see that anyone in the field of medicine attempted to make things a bit easier on ourselves was in 1905 when pediatricians tried to describe the six then known diseases which cause rashes by giving them numbers.
After all, unlike today, back then physicians weren’t so much the type of people who were (more…)
It was a much, much less complicated world back “then.” Back then nearly EVERY grandparent had seen and knew about rashes. None of them were a good sign.
There was no “real” treatment as we know it today and even less understanding about causes OR prevention. What they did know was that babies died of them… routinely!
There was, however, enough experience with them that they knew at least six different syndromes of illness associated with rash types, clinical course, and sequelae. Here are the six… they were given numbers instead of names.
Pretty much everyone has had a headache at some time or other. Unfortunately it is principally viewed as an adult disease when, in fact, it frequently occurs in children and adolescents as well.
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Let me let you listen in on a typical conversation between a pediatrician and parents of an infant, child or adolescent who is quite ill.
“Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Adam looks very ill, but I can’t be sure about what’s causing it until we run some tests.”
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The summer is full of things that bite, have you noticed? Bees, wasps, fire ants, snakes, spiders, flies, mosquitoes, ticks, and scorpions. Some areas have these threats to health and sanity all year long.
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