Month: July 2024

Bandage is synonymous with healing and care. The word comes from “bind” or to hold together. It is a symbol of empathy and care. Some recent postage stamps designed to convey care, are shaped like bandages. These are a more modern version of bandage- small and sticky. However, bandages are not always small. When wounds… Continue reading Bandage: A cloth cover to wrap, hold or press

Index Home On 25th July every year, World Health Organisation (WHO) observes world drowning prevention day. Tag-line of this day is – anyone can drown, no one should. While, death by drowning is not a recent occurrence, its prevention-day is just three years old. In 2021 United Nations added it to the list of annual… Continue reading Anyone can drown, no one should

Index Home Basic Life Support or BLS is a sequence of actions, that attempt to bring life back, after it has seemingly ceased. When heart stops, or lungs fail to breathe, we have moved closer to death. However, all is still not over. We still have a few more minutes to make heart to beat… Continue reading Basic Life Support (BLS) makes dead alive again

Index Home Stretcher is an unassuming medical transportation device. It is unassuming, as it lays hidden between the patient and the stretcher-bearer. Stretcher bearers also are often unsung. Yet stretchers and bearers come to rescue when we need to transport sick or injured. Stretchers have evolved, and so have its bearers. Postage stamps are a testimony… Continue reading Stretcher and its bearers over the years

Index Home Words have a history, and so has “babywearing”. As per Webster’s dictionary, we used this word for the first time in the year 1989. It is the practice of carrying babies, or small children in a sling, or another form of carrier. Practically any parent, usually mothers can wear their babies, keeping both hands… Continue reading Babywearing: A new name for an old tradition

Index Home In 1896 a textbook of surgery had noted that operating on a heart is impossible. Muscles of the heart are always in motion, and its chambers are always churning blood. Heart is enclosed in a thick cover. We know this cover as pericardium. While, in 1893 an American surgeon Daniel Hale Williams had stitched… Continue reading Cardiac surgery: putting heart under a knife

Index Home We all live, without skipping a heart-beat. These are more than 25 billion beats over a life-time. Each of these beats means that our heart muscles have had a powerful squeeze, pours blood to all our nooks and corners. But what makes our heart beat ? This enigma was settled in early 1900s, when… Continue reading Wavy ECG gestures that make our heart to beat

Index Home Hysteria is a state of emotional extreme. Today we know it as an uncontrolled frenzy or excitement, that may stem from intense happiness, spirituality or even grief. Attendees of a pop-concert often become hysterical, and this emotion often consumes spiritual congregations. The range of emotions is wide, from a hysterical laugh to a cry.… Continue reading The history of hysteria, our frenzy of womb or mind