ramadocblog

As you grow older you realise that one plus one is not two!

Our textbooks are full of facts which can be questioned! They are full of great people with questionable characters and finally there are actually just an iota of actual truth or fact between a veritable mountain of exaggeration!

Talking about Mountains; everyone knows about the tallest one in the world! Mount Everest stands tall! But if you measure the height from the floor to the top then there are two contenders!

Mount  Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth (at least on land!) stands just 5.5 miles high! But the actual tallest mountain when measured from base to peak, is Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, which originates at the bottom of the ocean, is far taller than Everest, at about 33,500 feet (10,210 meters).

Of course measured from sea level, Mauna Kea reaches only about 13,800 feet (4,200 meters)!

Just when Mauna was rejoicing, comes the actual tallest mountain in the Solar System!

The highest mountain and volcano in the Solar System is on the planet Mars.!

It is called Olympus Mons and is 16 miles (24 kilometers) high which makes it about three times higher than Mt. Everest! Imagine that!

In addition to being very tall, it is also very wide (340 miles or 550 kilometers) and covers an area larger than the entire chain of Hawaiian islands. Olympus Mons is a very flat mountain which slopes by only 2 to 5 degrees. It is a shield volcano built up by eruptions of lava.

As described in this Novel by Ellis Silver, apparently Mars once had several active volcanoes, but they’re all extinct now!

The crust and mantle have become too thick for molten rock to break through from the core.  And this causes them to swell up and reach such heights!

So when even Everest is not the tallest then what’s the fate of the other smaller mountains!

Well, forget Everest (even the name was not its original!); in fact in Nepal it is known as Sagarmatha! Now whatever you call it or whatever be its height or whether it is the tallest in the world or in the universe; it makes no difference to the mountain!

It just stands tall touching the skies or at least reaching for it! Just how Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata did and how!

Now of course it is the time to Sutnu! Which is sleep in Nepali!

Shubh Ratri!

It has often been said that the most precious things are protected by the strongest stuff or Armour!


Like the Pearl or even the brain!

Even within the skull, the toughest bone in the human body is given the job of protecting this organ system which can show how important it is!

Of course there is a bias here but then you cannot ignore the fact that the cochlea is located in the inner ear and it is so important that the toughest bone in the human body (the petrosal bone)!

The cochlea is a Greek name that means snail. Which is very fitting, considering the cochlea looks just like a snail shell!
And the turn of the Cochlea has to be exact! It is generally 2 3/4! That is the exact shape and turn of over 99 percent of the Homo Sapien which makes him or her listen to you!

Of course only the shape is just a small component of the complex physiology of hearing!

Approximately 24,000 hair fibers can be found within the cochlea. These hair cells are necessary for hearing.

If you still do not feel that hearing is important then just know that the cochlea is the first organ to develop completely and is formed 4 ½ months into a pregnancy so you can ideally start listening as early as 4 month in utero!

So when Arjuna tells about Chakravyuh and Abhimanyu ‘hears’ then you can accept it!

Even otherwise the ear is so important since you are supposed to ‘listen’ more! Not simply hear!

Also remember that just because you have said something does not mean that the other person has heard or even listened!

Another reason why this organ is so safely tucked inside is that what you hear is precious and what you comprehend is priceless! Which is why we have two ears!

All this on the world hearing day! Now listen to something pleasant like  Maa by Shankar Mahadevan and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

This was the first behemoth every medical student learns or tries to learn! The enthusiasm of the average med student is soon broken when he tries to finish one chapter and then realises that he or she does not remember much or even understood it in the first place!

Though we all start with this, we finally stick to the Indian book! And finally to our own or class notes!

I am telling about the Gray’s anatomy textbook! Of course for most non medicos it may refer to the famous TV series (that was spelled GREY’s anatomy!) which was just watchable till they killed of Derek; it was just downhill from that with no recovery whatsoever! Luckily the more recent versions of the BOOK is much better that the show!

The version which finally reached our shores was this gigantic book with tiny fonts and amazing paper! Just to buy and hold it and walk around with it required strength, lots of money and a ton of confidence!

There are a couple of interesting stories even in this book! Not in the book per say but in the writing and making of the book! If it is stories you seek then you would not find any in the pages of the Gray’s anatomy!

Apart from the text and the amazing details in this big book, the best thing about it were the images and more importantly the hand drawn sketches!

Even when the theory or the text was something you could not remember or read in the first place, the sketches were a visual treat!

Now the most amazing history of these sketches were that not only were they of great detail, they were in fact originally drawn in reverse!

Imagine the artistry of the artist who could do that!

That was Henry Vandyke Carter who was the great who Sketched this masterpiece! 

Coming to the vain and envious Gray! Yes! He was not so high and mighty!

When he saw the images, he understood that they would be remembered more and appreciated more! Moreover, images may not change much but later on after more research, the anatomy would have some modifications in that the text written by Gray would change but the images sketched by Carter would stand the test of time!

So he did what you would expect a jealous vain person to do! Sabotage!

The vain Gray made sure that Carter’s name was in smaller font and he did not receive any royalty or much payment for his works! 

But the Karmic eyes sees all! 

Many times all you need to do is wait for your enemy or envy to gets its due!

Gray passed away soon after the printing of his book and never got to know the legend it would become while Carter had an amazing teaching life going on to become the principal of Grant Medical College! 

Real talent would shine like the diamond or Gold! While the covering would fade away without polish!

Just like Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan! Have sketched him a couple of times before but this one was simply effortless. 

SHubh Ratri!

Oh yeah! If you wanted to sleep as a medical student then you MUST read the Grays Anatomy!

You love the rose but the thorns are fatal!

It was true ages back when a simple prick from a thorn would have been fatal!
Injuries from a great war or fight or even a simple act of gardening would have killed you more than the wound!

Did you know that the treatment of TB without antibiotics was, well fresh air!

If you were lucky you would survive.

If you had any of the other bacterial infection like the Syphilis then it was a death sentence for sure! It would not only take you but also make sure you get disfigured and suffer till the last.

Then as described in a book by Bill Bryson called the Body he describes how a person who got infected with the prick of a thorn was treated first time with Penicillin! Unfortunately the dose was not sufficient and even though he improved a little, it was not enough.

Of course when proper production began, Penicillin turned out to be one of the most important inventions of the modern medicine ever! Even now antibiotics are a major share of the prescription of any medical practitioner!

Then again with every rose, come the thorns!

Unfortunately though the rampant and unnecessary use of antibiotics has lead to multidrug resistant bacteria!

Remember that they were here before us and they don’t need us, we need them! In the absence of many bacterium we will not survive! And the antibiotics in our food and other products will kill them also!
There are also some good gut bacterias which have been eliminated which used to protect us!

Though most antibiotics are still effective and given only when required but many times when it is taken without recommendation or prescription  or even by those who do not realise the problems it would cause, it is a great crime!

That day is not far that we will come a full circle and a prick from a thorn will definitely be fatal again!

So don’t be a hero (or lead actress for that matter!) and self medicate! Speaking of hero reminds me of the first super star of Tamil cinema! You might not have heard of him though!

Thyagaraja Bhagavathar!

Shubh ratri!

Although this is one of the smallest bone in the body, it was once making you eat!

One of the most complex mechanisms of hearing is the fact that there are three tiny bones inside your ear which amplify the sound coming to the ear and generate a signal which is then send to the brain for perception!

If these were not available then you do have hearing loss which is really severe. Of course there are some surgeries whose only aim is to either correct the issues of the bone or even the drum to which the bones are attached!

It is almost magical to see how a surgery on this small bone gets the hearing back!

But (now that was seen a mile away!); did you know that this amplification is actually only a recent or latest modification!?

Apparently over the course of the evolution of mammals, one bone from the lower and one from the upper jaw (the articular and quadrate bones) lost their purpose in the jaw joint and migrated to the middle ear.

The shortened columella connected to these bones within the middle ear to form a chain of three bones, the ossicles, which serve to effectively transmit air-based vibrations and facilitate more acute hearing!

In simple terms, the bones which help you in hearing now were in the past used for biting!

Now is that why listening to some words, your actual jaws start to grind! Possible!

Then again by evolution it has been understood that you must eat less and listen more!

Also see more! Then you will realise that the funny guy from Arya is the serious dude of Pushpa! Indukuri Sunil Varma or Sunil!

Shubh ratri!

Necessity is the mother of many inventions is so true for this one! Although named as a safety device, it has been a bane for Surgeons all over the world who have removed it from lungs, throat and stomach!

When in need though it is so useful!

A simple cost effective device which every mother used to have hanging from her chain! Or in her purse!

Button is broken!? or you want to clip something together albeit temporarily!? You can use this!

To think that this was invented only to settle a small debt and though it went on to earn millions, the inventor was happy with some!

The design is so perfect that it has not undergone much modification for more than two hundred years!

This when even the mobile phone you bought yesterday is already outdated today!

This device is the humble but useful SAFETY PIN!

It also comes with an interesting story!

Born on July 29, 1796, in Martinsburg, New York, Walter Hunt achieved moderate success in life and invented many items, including a repeating rifle, a flax spinner, a fountain pen, a knife sharpener, an ice plough and one of the world’s first sewing machines with an eye-pointed needle!

But he is best known as the official inventor of Safety pin! Official since he filed the patent and since similar device was used before by jewelers! 

Hunt came up with the idea when he owed someone a $15 debt, and he scrambled to invent something that would earn him some money!

He twisted a piece of metal wire and turned it into what he called a “dress pin,” which had a spring at one end that forced the other end into a clasp. Now as mentioned above Hunt’s invention wasn’t completely new, as ancient Romans used something similar for jewelry; his was though a big improvement!

After being issued U.S. patent #6,281 on April 10, 1849, Hunt sold the patent to W.R. Grace and Company for $400 (roughly $15,000 in 2024 dollars! Which is still a good amount!). 

Using that money, Hunt then paid the $15 owed to a friend and kept the remaining amount of $385 for himself. 

In the years to follow, W.R. Grace and Company would make millions of dollars in profits from his invention!

His safety pin remains one of the simplest yet most enduring inventions in everyday use.

Of course if used properly it was a safe device but still when open it was a dangerous one! 

The laryngologist Dr. Chevalier Jackson devised special instruments for removing swallowed safety pins. Because small children often swallowed them and open pins could be lodged dangerously in their throats, Jackson called them “danger pins” and sometimes displayed arrangements of those he had extracted! Every otolaryngologist including the writer of this blog has a safety pin story! Of course it is scary only if the pin is open! We have often tried to either close the pin or turn it upside down so that the removal is less traumatic.

Still, to stand the test of time and come shining is a testimonial to Safety pin!

Just use them safely like water or jal!

Which reminds me of ganga jal!

Which reminds me of Prakash Jha!

In the novel technology of the Gods by David Hatcher Childress; he tells (tells because it is an audiobook!) about this amazing structure in India which is one of the biggest astrobleme in the world! And it may be related to the K-Pg extinction event!

Yes; you questioning is right!?

What is an astrobleme? also what is K-Pg extinction!?

Well the former is an eroded remnant of a large crater made by the impact of a meteorite or comet!

We will come to the latter later!

The astrobleme or crater in question is called the Shiva Crater!

The Shiva Crater is thus an impact crater (astrobleme), located in the Indian Ocean west of India, near Mumbai.

It has been suggested that it formed around 65 million years ago, the same time as a number of other impacts that are recorded in the K-T boundary. Although it has shifted since its formation because of sea floor spreading, when pieced together it would be about 600 km by 450 km across and 12 km deep (and may be just part of a larger crater). It is estimated to have been made by a bolide (an asteroid or meteoroid) 40 km in diameter.

Unlike typical known extraterrestrial impact structures, Shiva is teardrop shaped, roughly 600 km × 400 km. It is also unusually rectangular.

The Deccan Traps are closely associated with the crater, lending support to the idea that the traps were created by an impact event. At the time of the K-T extinction, India was located over the Réunion hotspot of the Indian ocean.

Hot material rising from the mantle flooded portions of India with a vast amount of lava, the Deccan Traps, beginning a few million years before the K-T extinction and becoming very abundant about 65 million years ago. The vast magma plume finally breaking out at the surface could have been accelerated by an impact event is the hypothesis!

So then what is the K-Pg extinction event!?

Well if you had seen the ending of the Ice Age movies you would know! For those who have not then we can wait for you!

Anyway the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the K–T extinction, was the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth approximately 66 million years ago!

The event caused the extinction of all known non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kg (55 lb) also became extinct, with the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians!

So the crater, the crocodiles and the sea turtles are all testimonials to the massive destruction which happened but they still lived to tell us the tale!

The Shiva crater was named by the paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee for Shiva, the Sanatana god of destruction!

Destruction leads to regeneration and that’s life…

Celebrating the Bholenath on this auspicious day!

Har har Mahadev!

Om namah shivaya!

Shubh Ratri!

This was named after poison! The two most popular things named after it can bring both the biological and physical world to a halt!

Both of them are so common and usually harmless! But when a dangerous one surfaces then rest assured, the whole world gets to know!

One is naturally seen while the other is created unnaturally by a sick individual (at least in the mind!)

Before further ado; the name which means Poison in latin is VIRUS!

The history of computer virus pretty interesting and deserves another blog! The biological one is also not far behind as it stopped the whole world during COVID!

Then again, before you get to know about its history, you must know about the Tobacco plant chiefly for educational purposes!

The tobacco plant was brought to Europe from the New World during the early sixteenth century, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a major Dutch crop.

In 1879, Adolph Mayer, director of the Agricultural Experiment Station in Wageningen, Holland, undertook studies on the diseases of tobacco. He showed that a leaf-mottling disease could be transmitted by rubbing juice from diseased plants onto the leaves of healthy plants. He coined the name ‘tobacco mosaic disease’ and suggested that the etiology was bacterial, although no such agent could be cultured.

Later on Dmitry Ivanovsky, a Russian microbiologist between 1887 and 1890, investigated the mosaic disease of tobacco plants occurring in Eastern Europe. He found that the disease-causing factor passed through a porcelain filter that had pores fine enough to hold back bacteria. He thus demonstrated that the cause of tobacco disease was due to a ‘filterable virus’ – the term virus coming from the Latin meaning poison. This term is now considered obsolete and is abbreviated to simply ‘virus’.

Ivanovsky’s work was confirmed in 1895 by the Dutch botanist Willem Beijerinck, who in addition showed that the disease produced by the filtered sap could be transferred serially plant-to-plant, proving that the agent was living and self-replicating rather than being simply a chemical toxin.

Finally in the 1930s, Wendell Stanley was able to produce the tobacco mosaic virus in solid crystalline form. He was the first person to be able to crystalize a virus. In this way, he was able to show that viruses are a type of particle and not a liquid contagion, which many had previously thought.

Wendell Stanley was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946!

So the thing which is as old as the first Cold to strike the Homo Sapien was finally seen in 1930s! Also it is such a tiny thing that we cannot see even with routine microscope! Sometimes size does not matter! What matters is the capability! Which reminds me of actor Dhanush! Some of his movies can be watched only because of him!

Now wash hands and take warm water and cover yourself nicely so that you do not get a cold and Sleep!

Shubh ratri…

Recently while having my hair trimmed at the Saloon I had a new barber tending to me. Every saloon I usually have my regular barber since I like to keep my hair short! The visit is usually every two months or so!

While talking to me he mentioned how my hair is a little bent at the ends and suggested that I do not wash it everyday!

He also mentioned how I must apply Mustard oil and leave it!

Now; most of the times I never tell anyone my profession so that I do not have to get free questions or even advice so I just nodded along!

But his confidence was so good so I thought I could give it a try!

Of course any oil on my head and I usually end up with either a bad cold or a severe case of Migraine!

And my migraine attacks are so severe that many times I need an injection! They are rare like a special occasion but when they do come, you would remember them for some time!

So I was thinking since I have not tried Mustard oil and have actually tried all other oils, maybe by trial and error, it may not give me any reaction!
He also mentioned how I should not shampoo my hair everyday! He categorically stated that Shampoo is only for women since they have longer hair!

My nodding along continued till the end of the cut! I must say he did a pretty good job since I was looking more ‘trim’!

Mentally I was thinking to at least try his advice and see!

Then as I took my wallet to pay him his fees and some tip; I had a look first time at his face and more importantly his head!

I was shocked to see his amazing clean temple with some hair on the sides! He had a partially balding head with some bent hairs trying to grip the sides and hold on! He had pulled the hair on the sides to try and cover the spot at least as much as he could!

Now him being bald or almost there was not the issue! The issue was him giving me advice on how to take care of my hair when his own head was a testimonial to the fact that his own hair strands were leaving him and more than half had already long gone!

The moral of the story is; give advice on making money only when you are rich!
Giving advice is something which anyone can give! But remember that if you want it to be respected or followed then you have to show the result of the advice in your own life!

My advice is to listen to a good song! Like the song up! Then you will realise that it’s inspired by a Hindi song by Talat Mahmood called Itna sa muzse…

Shubh ratri!

Have you heard of Durga!? Of course you would have heard of Durga Mata but this is Durga or Kanupriya Agarwal!

Search about her and no, she is not related to Kajal Agarwal!

Then you search about Subhash Mukhopadhyay!

And finally you can search about T C Anand Kumar!

Before all that you must know about the first IVF baby in the world!

The only non interesting thing (for others that is!) in all this is that it was done in the year of my birth! 1978!

So let’s start with Steptoe and Edwards!

In the year 1978 the final result of their efforts yielded result of a collaboration started in 1968.

So finally in 1977, Steptoe and Edwards successfully carried out a pioneering conception which resulted in the birth of the world’s first baby to be conceived by IVF, Louise Brown, on 25 July 1978 in Oldham General Hospital, Greater Manchester, UK!

In India the first official test tube baby was credited to T C Anand Kumar; a great soul indeed who after going through the notes and research concluded that he was not the first but the second! This was in 1986!

Remember that it takes much more confidence and guts to praise others!

The scientist in question was Subhash Mukhopadhyay!

Subhash Mukhopadhyay was an Indian scientist, physician from Hazaribagh, Bihar and Orissa Province who created the world’s second and India’s first child using in-vitro fertilisation.

Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay was harassed by the then West Bengal state government and not allowed to share his achievements with the international scientific community for unknown reasons.

So Kanupriya Agarwal (Durga), who was born in 1978 due to the work of Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay is the actual first IVF baby of India! Interestingly, she was born just 67 days after the first IVF baby in the world!

If at all you are asked to name a great doctor or a great Indian, you can tell Subhash Mukhopadhyay!

And speaking of a strong person like Durga reminds me of KPAC Lalitha who left us last year…

Read about Subhash ji and get inspired

Shubh ratri…