There are several layers to our ability to think as rational human beings. They are based on our experiences and education. Those things affect how our brain tells us to act. The most basic layer is common sense. [...]

On Thanksgiving we celebrate the feast that the Plymouth colony had with the Wampanoag tribe that lived in the area. The story goes that the native Americans heard gunshots of celebration. They thought the gunshots were signs of [...]

The Emergency Room is a busy place. There are lots of opportunities for things to fall through the cracks. A study published in July 2023 showed that the hectic pace led to hundreds of thousands of incorrect diagnoses [...]

When my mother was a child she caught diphtheria. She was able to survive. However, two of her siblings died from the same round of diphtheria. In 1938, measles, diphtheria and whooping cough were all in the top [...]

I was ushering at one of our weekly Saturday evening Masses. I greeted one of the widows attending the Mass. She told me that the one year anniversary of her husband’s death had just passed. It was difficult [...]

Halloween is a fun time for children. We sometimes forget about the origin of the celebration. November 1st is All Saints Day in the Catholic Church. It used to be called All Hallows (old word for Holies) Day. [...]

Sigmund Freud proposed many ideas as part of his psychoanalytic theory. Many of those ideas involve psychological defense mechanisms that humans use. One of those was called Projection. His logic is that the human ego has to protect [...]

I was doing my monthly pediatric review material and came across BRUE. I looked at it and said what the heck are they talking about. Then I realized that they had taken a condition that I had seen [...]

When I was a second year medical student, they brought in a patient with Huntington’s Disease. It was called Huntington’s Chorea in those days. The patient was in a wheelchair. She had a drawn haggard appearance. She had [...]

Getting into medical school has always involved a number of factors. For example, I was on the faculty of the Uniformed University of the Health Sciences (the military medical school). To even be considered for an interview at [...]