Show Notes
What killed Charles II of Spain, the inbred monarch whose autopsy famously showed a heart the size of a peppercorn, a head full of water, and a bloodless body? This episode addresses that medical mystery by not only delving deep into Charles' unfortunate past, but by exploring some of the fundamental assumptions physicians have made about the nature of disease. Along the way we'll walk about inbreeding coefficients, postmodern philosophy, and two thousand years of anatomy and autopsy. Plus a new #AdamAnswers about whether Vincent van Gogh's love of the color yellow was caused by digitalis poisoning!
Sources: Alvarez G, Ceballos FC, Quinteiro C (2009) The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a European Royal Dynasty. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5174. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005174 Burchell HB, Digitalis poisoning: historical and forensic aspects. J Am Coll Cardiol. 1983 Feb;1(2 Pt 1):506-16. Burton JL, A Bite Into the History of the Autopsy: From Ancient Roots to Modern Decay. Forensic Sci. Med. Pathol. 1:4:277. Cerda JL. Charles II of Spain, «the bewitched». Rev. méd. Chile [Internet]. 2008 Feb [cited 2019 Feb 11] ; 136( 2 ): 267-270. Cullen W, Nosology. Retrieved online at: https://books.google.com/books?id=3IgUAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage Books, 1975. Gargantilla Madera P. Enfermedades de los reyes de España, los Austrias : de la locura de Juana a la impotencia de Carlos II el Hechizado. Madrid 2005. Ghosh SK, "Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771): father of pathologic anatomy and pioneer of Modern Medicine, Anat Sci Int, 6 Sep 2016. Gruener A. Vincent van Gogh's yellow vision. Br J Gen Pract. 2013;63(612):370-1. Hodge GP. A Medical History of the Spanish Habsburgs: As Traced in Portraits. JAMA. 1977;238(11):1169–1174. Lagay F, The Legacy of Humoral Medicine, Virtual Mentor. 2002;4(7): Lee TC. Van Gogh's Vision: Digitalis Intoxication? JAMA. 1981;245(7):727–729. Lesney MS, Flowers for the heart, ACS, March 2002, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp 46, 48 López AG et al, Charles II: From Spell to Genitourinary Pathology. Arch. Esp. Urol. 2009; 62 (3): 179-185. Somberg J et al, Digitalis: Historical Development in Clinical Medicine, The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Volume 25, Issue 7 Starkstein, S., & Berrios, G. (2015). The "Preliminary Discourse" to Methodical Nosology, by François Boissier de Sauvages (1772). History of Psychiatry, 26(4), 477–491. Viale G, The rete mirabile of the cranial base: a millenary legend. Neurosurgery. 2006 Jun;58(6):1198-208.
More from Bedside Rounds
What does it mean when a computer can make better medical decisions than a human? The progress in large language models, and in particular the popularity of ChatGPT, has brought these questions to the forefront in 2023, but we've been discussing this for over 50 years. In this episode, Dr. Shani Herzig and I are going all the way back to the early 1970s with the invention of AAPHELP, the first real clinical decision support system, and the first time doctors had to contemplate working with – or competing against – computer systems.
What happens when a patient far from surgical care – say, at the bottom of the Pacific ocean on a submarine, or at a research base in Antarctica in the middle of the winter – develops a surgical abdomen? This dilemma was the impetus to build the first truly effective clinical decision support system – and to grapple with what it means when a computer can make better medical decisions than a doctor. In this episode, part one of three, we discuss the dramatic stories of appendectomies at Novolazarevskaya and aboard the submarine Seadragon. Also, there's a brand new #AdamAnswers about the origin of the word "scut."
American doctors spend the majority of their time during the day on the computer, either writing or reading notes about their patients; only a small fraction is spent with the human beings in their care. Technology itself – especially the electronic medical record – has often been blamed for this. But in this episode – a recorded grand rounds that I gave at the San Francisco VA in 2022 – I argue that this alienation has its roots in the way we've decided to organize clinical data, and the assumptions that we've made about the nature of medical care. In particular, I'm going to discuss one of the most influential medical thinkers of the second half of the 20th century, Larry Weed, his invention of the problem-oriented medical record and the SOAP note, and how his insight – that medical documentation fundamentally influences how we think about our patients – changed the way we think about our patients.
In the past episode, cultural and medical historians Lakshmi Krishnan and Mike Neuss discussed the history of the actual work of the doctor – Holmesian detective, data entry clerk, or something else altogether. In this episode, we conclude our discussion by talking about what type of metaphors are best suited for clinical work. Plus a brand new #AdamAnswers about the reason that American doctors are so obsessed with using, well, the # symbol in our notes.
What do doctors actually do? Are they Sherlockian detectives, hunting down obscure clues to solve intractable cases? Are they virtuosic experts, training for half a lifetime to bring the latest science to bear to cure disease? Or are they clerks, whose main job is to collect and enter data into the electronic health record? In this episode, Adam is joined by medical and cultural historians Lakshmi Krishnan and Mike Neuss to discuss the stories we tell about our own work – and how this often conflicts with the realities of clinical practice.