Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 080
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 FFFF, introducing the Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 080
Question 1
Which American band ‘wanted to be sedated’ and in the process created what Rolling Stone magazine considers to be the 144th greatest song of all time?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
The Ramones
As Leon said in Tox Tunes #35: “Not bad for a group that knew only 3 or 4 chords and whose entire play list contains few works much longer than 2 minutes.”
Don’t believe it was the 144th greatest song of all time? Here’s the proof.
Question 2
“If you’re down, he’ll pick you up” if you “take a drink from his special cup”. Who were the Beatles singing about?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Doctor Robert
The song by The Beatles is based on “a New York doctor who habituated his socialite clients to narcotics by mixing methedrine with vitamin shots”.
Leon featured this track in Tox Tunes #6.
Question 3
Reputedly the first punk band, these guys got together in the early ’60s and while ‘some folks prefer water or wine, they prefer straight strychnine’… Who are they?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
They featured in Tox Tunes #24, where Leon notes that, among others, they were a big influence on the White Stripes. They hailed from Tacoma, WA, a stones throw from what would become the epicentre of the Grunge explosion many years later.
Now might be a good time to check out our Strychnine Tox Conundrum too…
Question 4
What would “bore me terrifically too, yet I get a kick out of you”?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Cocaine
As Leon tells us in Tox Tunes #10: “This Cole Porter song was introduced by Ethel Merman in the 1934 musical Anything Goes. At that time, apparently, no one had problems with the second verse”:
“Some they may go for cocaine,
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrifically too,
Yet I get a kick out of you.”
The line was changed for the movie version to: “Some like the perfume from Spain”…
Question 5
What is “Jake Leg”?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
aka Jake Walk or Jake paralysis, the term refers to an organophosphate-induced delayed paralysis caused by consumption of Jamaican Ginger aka Jake.
Jake leg affected thousands in the American South and Midwest during prohibiton due to the adulteration of bootlegged Jamaican Ginger (~80% ethanol) with tri-ortho cresyl phosphate.
Leon mentions Jake Leg here, in the context of the recent phenomenon of levamisole-adultered cocaine.
FFFF
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at the Alfred ICU in Melbourne. He is also a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University. He is a co-founder of the Australia and New Zealand Clinician Educator Network (ANZCEN) and is the Lead for the ANZCEN Clinician Educator Incubator programme. He is on the Board of Directors for the Intensive Care Foundation and is a First Part Examiner for the College of Intensive Care Medicine. He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives.
After finishing his medical degree at the University of Auckland, he continued post-graduate training in New Zealand as well as Australia’s Northern Territory, Perth and Melbourne. He has completed fellowship training in both intensive care medicine and emergency medicine, as well as post-graduate training in biochemistry, clinical toxicology, clinical epidemiology, and health professional education.
He is actively involved in in using translational simulation to improve patient care and the design of processes and systems at Alfred Health. He coordinates the Alfred ICU’s education and simulation programmes and runs the unit’s education website, INTENSIVE. He created the ‘Critically Ill Airway’ course and teaches on numerous courses around the world. He is one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) and is co-creator of litfl.com, the RAGE podcast, the Resuscitology course, and the SMACC conference.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Twitter, he is @precordialthump.
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