History of Medicine

As the only lefty in my immediate family, I have always been intrigued by handedness, which is defined as an individual's preferential use of one hand, also known as the dominant hand. This post is dedicated to all the world's lefties trying to function in a right-handed world (you know what I'm talking about!) For my clueless right-handed friends, think of me when you see a classroom desk, scissors, or a microscope!)  Left-handedness is apparently genetic, so it's all the more surprising that I'm the only one in my family. However, my extended family on my dad's side certainly has some more lefties, so it's not all that strange. Another interesting tidbit that I found was that India has about half as many left-handers as the United States (despite its much larger population), and this is attributed mainly to the cultural aspect of the society. India is known to be a "collectivistic culture", which discourages left-handedness in children, whereas i

Happy Star Wars Day on this May the 4th! On this momentous day for Star Wars fans, I wanted to revisit the concept of the "force" that Star Wars borrowed from ancient medicine.   As Obi-Wan Kenobi explains, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”  Pretty heavy stuff!  In an old post, I explored the similarity between this force field and the life force that is an essential component of many ancient civilizations: prana in India, qi in Chinese culture, Japanese  ki, Egyptian ka,  Greek pneuma ,   and the Latin spiritus . All of these are essentially the same "life force energy" that keeps us alive and binds us. Just as Luke Skywalker trains to harness the power of the force, yoga, reiki, taichi and other ancient practices teach how to control and balance the life force present inside of us. So here's wishing everyone boatloads of the force worki