pediatric housecalls Robert R. Jarrett M.D. M.B.A. FAAP
Hello, and welcome to Pediatric House Calls. I am… A Physician board certified in Pediatric medicine with Clinical experience including caring for infants, children and teens – well these days mostly children and teens up to twenty-one; An Administrator experienced in top medical management for several national health insurance companies; An Author of health care manuals, newspaper columns and even children's stories; A Business Medical Consultant for drug companies, insurance companies and
physician practices; A Veteran of the US Navy in the Vietnam era;
And… I make House-Calls.
Truly, much (if not most) of what we do in medicine has had its roots in shear GUTS, DETERMINATION, OCD behavior, STUBBORNESS and… absolute SERENDIPITY! Don’t just take my word for it, ask their discoverers or inventors – accidental medical discoveries.
When I think back on it, to me it’s sheer mind-boggling! I wrote about a few of them, but soon realized these posts need to be put in a series so they can be noticed and thought about.
That’s what the posts listed below are: a list of fifteen or more discoveries which: 1- clearly changed the way the entire practice of medicine worked; 2- benefited all of humanity; and 3- nearly all of humanity has already heard about, but probably dismissed as commonplace.
If you don’t believe me, just think of these words: penicillin, diabetes, pacemakers, X-Ray, ulcer and… Viagra. Got’cha, right? And these are just a few. Read on!
4 Posts in "Accidental Discoveries" Series
Accidental Discoveries: Intro/Index – 2 Mar 2018 I have to say that the discoveries this series of posts cover are near miraculous. Truly sheer guts, determination, grit, OCD behavior and… let's just say it… sheer accidental luck! Yet they're here and humankind are better off because of them: the Accidental Medical Discoveries Curated Series of posts
Part 1: Microscopes, Vaccination, Anesthesia, Bacteria Cultures, Viagra – 3 Mar 2018 It's mind-boggling just how many MAJOR discoveries in medicine, indeed all science, are attributed BY THEIR INVENTORS to mear, schmear LUCK! To name just a few: here are the first five (of at least twelve) I can think of. Microscopes, Vaccination, Anesthesia, cultures of bacteria and… Viagra.
Part 2: Penicillin, Warfarin, Eye Lens, Benzodiazepines, Interventional Radiology, Ulcers – 13 Mar 2018 The path to a medical discovery is anything but "straight and narrow"! More than any scientist likes to believe or talk about, these "discoveries" take the scenic route. Such was the case with penicillin, anti-coagulants, replacement eye lenses, anti-anxiety drugs, heart surgery and ulcer treatment. Many invented in time to save lives during war.
Part 3: X-Rays, PAPs, Pacemakers, Rogaine, Antabuse, Pancreas-Diabetes – 15 Mar 2018 It's amazing no one was actually killed when these things were invented! From a device which was supposed to record the heart but instead accidentally sparked; to double-dealing by a pharmaceutical company and filing a police report. X-Rays, vaginal cancer, hair growth, alcoholism treatment and the diabetes–pancreas relation. These all had to be "the-grace-of-God" discoveries.
If you’d like to know more about medical discoveries, I’ve written posts about many important physicians throughout time in a large continuing series.
Look, there’s a lot screwy about “THE FLU” and enough blame to share about all the confusion. AND, only part of it is about the complete lack of understanding surrounding what to call it.
More•than•once I’ve written posts trying to clarify the name, diagnosis, treatment an how to avoid confusion; but, the issues just seem to feed on themselves and prevent any attempt at understanding. Read more →
Old man death has not had such an easy time since these next two “most influential doctors of all time” came on the scene.
Dr. E. Donnall Thomas and Dr. Joseph E Murry, both received the 1990 Nobel prize for their independent lifetime of work against cancer and the life-saving techniques they developed and pioneered. Read more →
It would be a rare parent indeed who didn’t, at least once, wish they could peer into their son’s or daughter’s adolescent brain—if only just to see “what on earth made them do THAT!”
Well, a noted neuroscientist, and mother of a teenager, has done it for you! Look into the adolescent brain. Here’s what she found in there.
Like we do every year, and sometimes twice, we post the newly updated Immunization Schedule recommendations from the CDC and the AAP. You can get them direct from the CDC of course, but I post them here because I want to do my part in spreading the word And, you’re already here right? So why waste the effort of looking it up yourself?>
This year the link to the CDC page has BLOATED into a bunch of self-promoting side stuff; so, I’ve had to clip their page in order to display it but not foul up my whole page. However, I do give you all the links to their full pages—should you want to check out the specifics. In fact here’s a good link right HERE and HERE but there are others I’ll give you too. Read more →
Would it surprise you to know that: if YOU were one of the medicine police and one morning selected 100 mothers or fathers to just drop in and double-check the liquid medicine they had measured and were about to give their kid – most of them would be wrong?!
We would have to have been living under a rock in a desert somewhere NOT to have noticed the inordinate lengths pharmacies and drug companies have gone to in the past 10 years to improve accuracy of parents measuring medicines. But, still to this day (2018), parents are (and often) making BIG errors when measuring medicines. Read more →
I got a kick discovering an “atlas” of parenting and discipline types (according to Laura Hamilton at UC-Merced CA) who tallied three categories: Bystander parents with limited kid contact; Paramedics swooping in for major problems; and, Helicopters always hovering all the time.
I say a kick because although entertainingly descriptive (and perhaps embarrassingly accurate to a degree) it just seems to leave a WHOLE LOT out of the equation—and ignore half of it entirely: the kid! Read more →
