Bosch Hieronymus The Garden of Earthly Delights

Critical Analysis of the Medical Institution With Special Focus on Madness

In this online version of a paper written as a part of a Masters course at Queen Margaret University I have used visual screengrabs from the original texts. For the purposes of review and education I have chosen to integrate excerpts from each cited reference inline to assist the reader in learning more deeply the arguments which are being laid out.  The reader is encouraged to work through all the reference texts as each one offers a series of nuances important for unpacking the complex issues being dealt with. Read more…

Medical Magic by Elizabeth Moncrieff

In the following discourse I shall endeavour to shed light on how, and perhaps why, a serious disease has not been taken seriously for nearly half a century. The disease is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Many people think it is the same thing as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but I shall also explain why I do not believe this is the case. To achieve these goals I will give a brief history of major events in the history of this disease. Read more…

Blood and Blood Substitutes by Abigail Kraft

From the age of fourteen, I have worked in emergency medicine. Few people can say that; most of them are from the same town where I grew up: Darien, Connecticut. There, the town’s emergency medical services, Darien EMS – Post 53, are run almost entirely by teenagers. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it was the best of ideas, it was the worst of ideas – on the one hand, I have had the kind of experiences in medicine that most people my age can only dream of; on the other hand, well, I’ve had the kind of experiences in medicine that most people my age can only dream of.
A lot of these experiences center around blood, which, to someone with the background I have in medieval history, only makes sense. Blood, as Aryeh Shander points out when discussing transfusion, is one of the four humors that medieval doctors believed governed the body, along with black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Read more…

A Study of Multiple Sclerosis: Introduction to Hypothesis by Alex Dunedin

This article is the first of a series which proposes a thesis and hypothesis on the cause of Multiple Sclerosis and potential avenues of therapy.  It has been written as a contribution to the public domain to be critiqued, compared and peer reviewed by people who have an interest in multiple sclerosis, medicine, the sciences and thinking in general. It is an experiment in open online digital peer review and discussion.  Too few people are being included in the communities which get to make meaning, and too great a number are excluded from the conventions which help us to collectively work towards greater understandings.
This is, of course, a reference to science and scientific method.  Never before in history has so much information been available to so many people.  Niether has there ever been a period with so many having access to the stuffs and materials of science.  The endeavour of humanity is held back when a relatively small group of select people decide for all the world that they are the sole paladins of knowledge and what gets included in discussions about matters which concern us all.  This has become the danger as society opens its debates only to those who have had the good fortune to be born in the right place and the right time.  True knowledge is of a deeper character, fortunately, and is available to all. Read more…

"Another stupid man, or, reasons why I do not engage with services" By John Sawkins

I was forced to take haloperidol and procyclidine for bipolar. I stopped taking them after 6 weeks. (cold turkey – I never told the doctor). I have not taken any medication for bipolar or other psychiatric condition for 15 years.
One side effect of haloperidol is known to be stroke which I duly experienced one year after taking the drug – and that was only 6 weeks’ worth! (They missed the diagnosis of stroke and put it down to “hallucinations”. I eventually succeeded in persuading an optician to confirm my diplopia (double vision). Read more…