Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
ALLERGY
ALLERGY: ______ ______ Prologue: Medical representatives of pharmaceutical industry frequently visit doctors to promote their products and shower doctors with drug samples, gifts and tours. One medical representative gifted me a perfume to promote his new product. I do not use perfumes. However, human mind is curious and when a perfume was given to me as a gift, I thought why not use it. Two weeks after using perfume, I developed itching skin rash over my body known as ‘Urticaria’ and dermatologist diagnosed it as allergy to perfume. The priciest perfumes and skin care products can cause allergic reactions because of the chemicals that give them their scent. In one fragrance, there may be as many as 26 allergens. The figure above shows urticarial skin rash in another patient. Allergy is not a disease but a mechanism which may play a role in a number of disorders. You can be allergic to anything […]
MIND READING
MIND READING: _ The baby in the figure above is trying to read mind of mother. _ Prologue: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. A controversial comment indeed but everybody wants to read mind of others and prevent others from reading their minds. Most of us have heard the old adage, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” In other words, keep your negative thoughts to yourself. But what if someone could read your thoughts? Thinking about what’s going on in other people’s heads, is something we do practically all the time. Did your boss like your presentation? Why did the beautiful woman on the bus smile at you? This type of mind reading is so ubiquitous in everyday life. Mind-reader is a […]
SANITATION
Note: During routine maintenance of website, the article ‘Sanitation’ was inadvertently lost and therefore I am re-instating it in its original form now. It was posted in December 2012 but now it is posted in March 2013. The article ‘Fear’ is following the article ‘Sanitation’. Dr. Rajiv Desai. MD. March 20, 2013 ________________________________ Saturday, December 1st, 2012 SANITATION : _ The picture above shows open defecation near railway track in India. _ Prologue: After writing many articles on topics which concern us in our daily life; right from food, environmental pollution, water and clothing, I thought I must write on the most important and most neglected subject, namely sanitation i.e. safe disposal of human excreta (feces & urine). Till the age of 15 years, I did not have the luxury of private toilet as I was brought up in a middle class environment in Mumbai where shared toilet was the […]
FEVER
FEVER: _ _ Prologue: “Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war. Of these, by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.” – Sir William Osler. For last 20 years, I have been treating fever and my patients included everybody from poor to wealthy; from honest to corrupt; and from politician to bureaucrat. I fully agree with Sir William Osler. No matter how high or low socioeconomic status and no matter how good or bad the person is, fever make them very helpless, very fearful, very vulnerable and very apprehensive. I have seen patients coming to hospital in ambulance with fever for one day; relatives pleading to save life and next day patients are fine & discharged. Fever is a common complaint leading families to seek medical attention. When I wrote on “Heat illness”, I thought I would follow it up with article on fever […]
ELECTRICITY
ELECTRICITY: _ The picture above shows how a barber cuts hair during recent power failure in India. _ Prologue: Electric crematoria were snuffed out with bodies inside, New Delhi’s Metro shut down and hundreds of coal miners were trapped underground after three Indian electric grids collapsed in a cascade on 30th and 31st July 2012, cutting power to 620 million people in India. The blackout engulfed as many as 19 of India’s 28 states on July 31, with more than 100 intercity trains stranded and traffic lights went out in busy roads, causing widespread jams. Without question, it was the largest blackout in world history. Hospitals, factories and the airports switched automatically to their diesel generators during the hours-long cut across half of India. Many homes relied on backup systems of invertors with batteries. On the other hand, millions of India’s poorest had no electricity to lose. Of the […]
