Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
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 […]
HEAT ILLNESS
HEAT ILLNESS: _ Prologue: Heat stroke is not new to the medical community. In 24 B.C., Roman soldiers with heat stroke were instructed to drink olive oil and wine while rubbing both liquids on the body. In the 1500s, physicians recommended stimulating friction and bloodletting to “release the heat”. In the 18th century, the cause of heat stroke was once thought to be drinking cold water. Patients would receive the diagnosis of “hurt by drinking cold water.” Amazingly, public pumps were posted with signs warning about the risk of sudden death from drinking cold water. Today, heat illness is the number one weather killer in the world and kills more people every year than tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and lightening. Heat illness is more common in poor & middle class people than rich people because air-conditioners are beyond the reach of majority of middle class people (especially in developing countries) and […]
