Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 116
Question 1
What was the cause of Derbyshire neck?
- Iodine deficiency
- Thyroid goitre due to iodine deficiency. [Reference]
- In the 18th Century, doctors were baffled by a mysterious condition that affected many of the people of Derbyshire. The afflicted, were mostly women and suffered a swelling on the bottom of their throats.
- “It generally occupies the whole front of the neck,” said local scholar Thomas Prosser, “as the whole thyroid gland is here generally enlarged, but is rather in a pendulous form, not unlike the flap or dew-cap of a turkey cock’s neck.”
Question 2
Who famously took a lethal dose of strychnine followed by a charcoal chaser in front of the French Academy in 1831 and survived?
- Professor Touery
- In front of his distinguished colleagues at the French Academy of Medicine, Professor Touery ingested 15g of strychnine (a lethal dose) mixed with activated charcoal – and lived to tell the tale. [Reference]
- M. Bertrand (a French chemist) was the first to perform such a daring experiment on himself to demonstrate the effectiveness of charcoal to absorb poison. In 1813 he ingested a lethal dose of arsenic after mixing it with activated charcoal. He survived his experiment.
Question 3
What’s the best use for marmite?
- …solving the Arab-Israeli conflict in the middle East
- At least according to Edward de Bono in advice he tendered to the foreign office in 2000.
- The logic, briefly, is this. Hypozincemia makes men irritable and belligerent. You get zinc in yeast, which is fine for your average loaf of bread. But in the Middle East, the bread is unleavened. Ergo, the great man says, Marmite is the answer to easing the way to peace. [Reference]
Question 4
What can you tell about a man from his shoe size?
- They need big shoes
- According to a study in 2002 published in the British Journal of Urology International there is no link between the size of a mans penis and is shoe size.
- 104 subjects were thoroughly measured at two hospital sites in the UK and they found the average Caucasian penis to be 3.5 inches (8.9cm) long with no correlation to shoe size. [PMID 12230622]
- Additional information can be found…for the uber inquisitive in a study of nomogram charting penile length studies in 15,000 men [“Am I normal…” PMID 25487360]
Question 5
What is the stroop effect?
- Demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task
- Classically, naming the colour of the first set of words is easier and quicker than the second. The original paper is one of the most quoted in experimental physiology. It has been used in dementia, brain injury, ADHD patients and even on Everest to test attention capacity. [Reference]
…and in other news
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3f3pTbKmow
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