As a student, and a medical one at that, I think I have spent more than seventy five percent of my last five years, poring over humourless, serious, boring, and sometimes disgusting textbooks, that too in small print. Maybe as a direct consequence of that much insult to my brain, my way of looking at things might have changed. Because I have now started finding humour in textbooks. Sad though it is , on one hand, it is extremely hilarious to think what the author was trying to convey when you look at some of the sentences I’ve found in my course of experience in medical textbooks.
Will quote some for an example. And begin with my favorite.
1. “ IgG, alone, among all human immunoglobulins, has the ability to fix to guinea pig skin, but the significance of this is not known”
( Text book of Microbiology, Ananthnarayanan)
Now, when you read this, at the beginning, one gets this feeling that IgG is a class apart from the other fellow Igs. And it piques your interest. Then you realize that its only because of its certain fondness for pig’s skin, that it is termed different. At this point, your interest is somewhat dampened. But then you move on, thinking if the author is mentioning this, it must have some medical, or clinical significance. And that’s when he decides to kill you by saying even he, nor any of the hundreds of people who have spent hours of research to conclude IgG’s unique guinea pig adherence do not know the significance. That’s when you want to throw up.
But believe me, when they asked me to write a short note on IgG, this was the only thing I remembered. So I wrote it. And italicized it, underlined it, in bold, with a different colour pen, so as to show off my ‘knowledge’.
Why, why would he do that? Increase the number of pages of the textbook, for something so inconsequential, that even he admits to?
2. “ The heat stable toxin also induces fluid accumulation in the intestinal loops of neonatal BUT not weaned piglets”
( Textbook of Microbiology, Ananthnarayanan)
Again, thanks to Dr Ananthnarayanan, I spent half the time I read micro, looking up weird statements like this. And these were all I remembered at the end of it as well. Neonatal, but not weaned piglets? I haven’t even seen a pig in years, leave alone a neonate at that, or a weaned one for that matter. I really really wonder what significance all these information have in a medical student’s life. Its torture, really.
And then there was more about monkey kidney, monkey brain, chick embryo, duck embryo that was 12 days old vs one that was 13 days old etc etc.
3. “According to devoted ‘amyloidologists’ who congregate every few years to discuss their favorite protein….”
( Robbins, Pathology)
For some reason, I found this statement extremely funny. None of my classmates agree with me, though. But I think its because it breaks the monotony of the amyloid drawl, and to think that those who actually study it are in fact human beings, was like throwing ice water on myself. Of course, I went around saying I wanted to be an ‘amyloidologist’ for the next one year, but that’s not for discussion :P The usage of the word ‘congregate’. I imagined little men, like birifringent crystals, walking around and whispering to each other in excitement.
4. “It has been suggested that yawning is a nonverbal signal used for communication between animals in a group, and one could argue that on a different level, the same thing is true for humans.”
( Ganong, Physiology)
He he. So someone had to do serious work on yawning to realize we are closer to monkeys and chimpanzees. Poor Darwin, he needn’t have wasted so much time. Sometimes when I read lines like these, I keep expecting to see a smiley, to confirm that its actually a joke, or atleast meant in good humour. But the next lines shock you back to reality. They would have proceeded to someother boring detail about monkey’s brain kidney, sorry, wait, this is physio right, then moving on to some hypoxia something blah blah, that you never get the full humour of it.
5. “… explaining the rapid dehydration that occurs in shipwreck victims who drink seawater. However a shipwreck victim’s pet Australian hopping mouse could drink with impunity all the seawater it wanted.”
( Guyton, Physiology)
Why in the world would a shipwreck victim be bothered about his pet Australian hopping mouse? But that was a totally funny statement. But no one other that me found it so. I was singled out as the weird one, for actually thinking so. Sad. But the first and the last ones are my favorite.
Anyway, these are just a few. Medical information sometimes is humourous. Will post more later. Am going to get back to studying!
PS: Yes, I do have a weird sense of humour.
