Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 137
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 137
Question 1
Is it rude to pandiculate in front of your consultant?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Yes! This is yawning.
From the latin pandiculātus, to “stretch oneself”.
Technically if you were to pandiculate you would add a stretching of the arms and arching of the back to your yawn.
Question 2
In America, between 1979 and 1993, 9 people were injured and 18 killed when struck by one type of sporting equipment. What equipment?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Soccer goal posts
Most cases of post collapse were associated with children playing and climbing on unstable goal posts rather than actually playing soccer. [Reference]
Question 3
Which disease was known as ‘Roman Fever‘ the name originates from the medieval Italian for ‘bad air‘?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Mal-aria.
The bad air was around stagnant water, the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. It was so pervasive in Rome that is was known as ‘Roman fever’ some Romans did associate the disease with the insects in the swamps.
The first significant advance in understanding this disease was in 1880 when Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran observed parasites in red blood cells. This was the first time a protist was identified as causing a disease. [Reference]
Question 4
So you’ve experienced an ice-cream headache but what is a ‘Hot dog headache‘?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Nitrite induced headache
A headache secondary to Nitrite in foods
Published in the lancet in 1972 describes a patient who had noted the development of headaches shortly after eating frankfurters. So the authors subjected him to an odourless and tasteless solutions containing 10 mg of sodium nitrite or solutions identical in appearance containing 10 mg of sodium bicarbonate.
Headaches were provoked eight out of thirteen times after the ingestion of sodium nitrite, but never after the control solution
- Henderson WR, Raskin NH. “Hot-dog” headache: individual susceptibility to nitrite. Lancet. 1972 Dec 2;2(7788):1162-3.
Question 5
Who is generally credited with the invention of medical pimping?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
William Harvey
Harvey is believed to have started pimping students as early as 1628.
William Harvey lamented his students’ lack of enthusiasm:
They know nothing of Natural Philosophy, these pin-heads. Drunkards, sloths, their bellies filled with Mead and Ale. O that I might see them pimped!
- Brancati FL. The art of pimping. JAMA. 1989 Jul 7;262(1):89-90.
FFFF
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five
Dr Neil Long BMBS FACEM FRCEM FRCPC. Emergency Physician at Kelowna hospital, British Columbia. Loves the misery of alpine climbing and working in austere environments (namely tertiary trauma centres). Supporter of FOAMed, lifelong education and trying to find that elusive peak performance.