Limits to medicine:Medical nemesis is a hard hitting novel by Ivan illich tells how the present day doctors are simply the priests of yesteryears who simply comfort but actually make no difference to the disease! Case in point is how according to the author is how the fall of TB and whooping cough is mainly because of better housing and nutrition and not medication!
Of course it takes some neutrality to just read the novel as a doctor since it is obviously against them!
Then again if you do not have good critic then how would you improve!? Just be careful of those whose past time is criticism! Those who only complain and never praise do not deserve either your time or your effort and most importantly your respect!
In one of the chapters, Ivan mentions this interesting story! In fact there are so many references and this goes to show how much research has gone in the novel so let us give him due!
So the example given was of something called the Paradoxical disease control! This was in relation to the insecticide DDT as studied by Davies and W. F. Edmundson.
The author states how this is a good example of paradoxical disease control from Borneo: Insecticides used in villages to control malaria vectors also accumulated in cockroaches, most of which were resistant! Those roaches would see the end of the Universe and maybe even survive that! Anyway that was not the crux! The issue was that the lizards who fed on these ‘chemically infused’ roaches were not resistant to the effect of DDT!
So the Geckoes those fed on these, became lethargic, and fell prey to cats!
The cats thought it was a great slow food! But of course they also were very sensitive to the DDT!
The final effect was that the cats died, and then the rats had a free run!
The rats multiplied, and with rats came the threat of epidemic bubonic plague!
To cut a long story a little less long; the final solution was that the army had to parachute cats into the jungle village to get the rats! And of course the DDT was stopped! Nature is nothing but balance!
A perfect balance were also those ACK comics especially the ones of Ithihasa which were a treasure house of knowledge! Fun and informative! Especially the Magnum Opus Mahabharat and Ramayan!
The sketch of today is of this great celebrity who made many of those stories happen!
Kamala Chandrakant!
Thank you madam for the amazing work!
We will miss you! Heartfelt condolences
Om shanti
Shubh ratri…
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