Table of Contents
Title Page
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
1 VAMPIRES: ANY MEDICAL BASIS FOR THE MYTH?
2 LEPROSY: A PIECE OF HISTORY, OR STILL A THREAT?
3 DIVINE INTERVENTION: CAN PRAYER EFFECT MEDICAL OUTCOMES?
4 EPILEPSY: OLD DEMONS OR NEW UNDERSTANDINGS?
5 THE ROD OF CADUCEUS: ONE SNAKE OR TWO?
6 FEVER THROUGH THE CENTURIES
7 IS SHOCK TREATMENT STILL USED TO TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS?
MYTHS OF A GENDERED PERSUASION
8 WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN: OR ARE TIMES CHANGING?
9 SHOULD A SURGEON BE CALLED DOCTOR, MISTER, OR MS?
10 FOR WOMEN, IS 40 THE NEW 20?
11 GOUTY OLD MEN?
12 THE RIB MYTH: DO WOMEN HAVE ONE MORE THAN MEN?
13 EQUAL SEX RATIO AT BIRTH?
TERMINATING THE CANCER MYTH
14 A VITAMIN CURE FOR CANCER?
15 IS CHILDHOOD CANCER INCURABLE?
16 DOES WEARING SUNSCREEN PREVENT SKIN CANCER?
17 “FRIDAY LEUKEMIA”
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT
18 CRANBERRY JUICE PREVENTS URINARY INFECTIONS
19 DOES EATING CHOCOLATE CAUSE ACNE?
20 IS THE BEST HEART DIET AN ULTRA LOW FAT DIET?
21 SHOULD WE ALL BE ON GLUTEN-FREE DIETS?
MEDICAL CONTROVERSIES
22 PLACEBO: IS A “DUMMY PILL” ETHICAL?
23 THE HIGH COST OF DYING
24 VACCINE CONTROVERSIES
25 DIABETES AND THE INSULIN STORY: JUST TOO MUCH SUGAR?
26 SUBSTANCE ABUSE: A PROBLEM OF THE YOUNG?
27 CAN LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC MAKE US SMARTER?
A POTPOURRI OF MEDICAL MYTHOLOGY
28 HEAD LICE: SIGN OF POOR SOCIAL CONDITIONS?
29 TEETHING AND FEVER: DO THEY GO HAND IN HAND?
30 RED HAIR SKIPS GENERATIONS
31 WILL MARIJUANA HELP YOUR CHILD'S SEIZURES?
32 ARE BILINGUAL CHILDREN SMARTER CHILDREN?
33 ARE BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS UNSAFE?
HANDING IN THE PAGER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OF PLAGUES
AND VAMPIRES
Believable Myths and Unbelievable Facts from Medical Practice
DR. MICHAEL HEFFERON
WOODPECKER LANE PRESS
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
1 VAMPIRES: ANY MEDICAL BASIS FOR THE MYTH?
2 LEPROSY: A PIECE OF HISTORY, OR STILL A THREAT?
3 DIVINE INTERVENTION: CAN PRAYER EFFECT MEDICAL OUTCOMES?
4 EPILEPSY: OLD DEMONS OR NEW UNDERSTANDINGS?
5 THE ROD OF CADUCEUS: ONE SNAKE OR TWO?
6 FEVER THROUGH THE CENTURIES
7 IS SHOCK TREATMENT STILL USED TO TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS?
MYTHS OF A GENDERED PERSUASION
8 WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN: OR ARE TIMES CHANGING?
9 SHOULD A SURGEON BE CALLED DOCTOR, MISTER, OR MS?
10 FOR WOMEN, IS 40 THE NEW 20?
11 GOUTY OLD MEN?
12 THE RIB MYTH: DO WOMEN HAVE ONE MORE THAN MEN?
13 EQUAL SEX RATIO AT BIRTH?
TERMINATING THE CANCER MYTH
14 A VITAMIN CURE FOR CANCER?
15 IS CHILDHOOD CANCER INCURABLE?
16 DOES WEARING SUNSCREEN PREVENT SKIN CANCER?
17 “FRIDAY LEUKEMIA”
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT
18 CRANBERRY JUICE PREVENTS URINARY INFECTIONS
19 DOES EATING CHOCOLATE CAUSE ACNE?
20 IS THE BEST HEART DIET AN ULTRA LOW FAT DIET?
21 SHOULD WE ALL BE ON GLUTEN-FREE DIETS?
MEDICAL CONTROVERSIES
22 PLACEBO: IS A “DUMMY PILL” ETHICAL?
23 THE HIGH COST OF DYING
24 VACCINE CONTROVERSIES
25 DIABETES AND THE INSULIN STORY: JUST TOO MUCH SUGAR?
26 SUBSTANCE ABUSE: A PROBLEM OF THE YOUNG?
27 CAN LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC MAKE US SMARTER?
A POTPOURRI OF MEDICAL MYTHOLOGY
28 HEAD LICE: SIGN OF POOR SOCIAL CONDITIONS?
29 TEETHING AND FEVER: DO THEY GO HAND IN HAND?
30 RED HAIR SKIPS GENERATIONS
31 WILL MARIJUANA HELP YOUR CHILD'S SEIZURES?
32 ARE BILINGUAL CHILDREN SMARTER CHILDREN?
33 ARE BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS UNSAFE?
HANDING IN THE PAGER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © Michael Hefferon 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The author holds copyright in his work.
ISBN: 978-1-7750092-0-7
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hefferon, Michael, author
Of plagues and vampires: believable myths and unbelievable
facts from medical practice / Michael Hefferon.
Includes bibliographical references.
978-1-7750092-0-7 (electronic book)
1. Medical misconceptions. 2. Medicine, Popular. I. Title.
R729.9.H64 2017 610 C2017-901249-5
Cover design: Maureen Garvie/ Allan Graphics
Author photo: Greg Black Photography
Published in Canada by Woodpecker Lane Press
Kingston, ON K7K 5E2
[email protected]
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SHAVING WILL MAKE YOUR HAIR grow in thicker. Swim right after you eat, and you’ll get a cramp and drown.
True? Or only myths?
Myths, defined as “widely held but false notions,” continue to pervade our everyday life. And after 40 years of practising medicine on three continents, I maintain that no group can hold a candle to medics when it comes to holding dubious beliefs, many of them propagated by our own profession!
When I entered medicine in 1970, Latin was a prerequisite, and biology was not. Extra points were given for classical Greek. Trinity College in Dublin graduated doctors with a combined degree in literature and medicine. But while medicine is rooted in ancient knowledge, it has been transformed, particularly since the latter half of the twentieth century, into a science-based medium for advancement of wellness and elimination of disease. In recent years, technology and bio-science have enabled medical scientists to prove or disprove beliefs that have been around for many generations.
Over the course of my 40-year medical career, 30 years of it devoted to the care of sick children, I have had countless encounters with beliefs closer to folklore than fact or science. For example: women have one rib more than men. Or: we should all be on gluten-free diets. Vampires really exist as a medical phenomenon. Electric shock treatment (ECT), rather than a tool in helping patients with mental illness, is a form of medical torture.
Treating a sick or troubled child today requires more than just lab tests and referral letters. One of my first questions is “What do the patient and the parents believe regarding their medical situation?” What if parents believe that a glass of wine the mother drank when she was pregnant caused their child’s developm
ental symptoms? What if they believe that blood transfusions are likely to lead to permanent damage or infection to their child? Or, in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that the receiving of blood is damaging to their child’s soul?
In these pages I explore these and many more beliefs. Join me in touring the interface of traditional beliefs as they meet modern medicine. And remember that in 1500 AD, professing a belief that the world was round rather than flat could lead to imprisonment, excommunication, or worse!
I am eternally grateful to all who encouraged and supported me in the writing of this book. Such an endeavour encompasses stories from teachers in my distant past and students in my day-to-day life.
Thanks to Midia, for your patience and endless typing.
To Catherine, Kate, Barry, and Claire for your special interest and help with the project.
And especially to Maureen Garvie, who has done so much to bring this book to its completion.
Michael Hefferon
2017
INTRODUCTION
I WASN’T LONG INTO my career as a physician and educator before I realized that many of my referrals were coming from colleagues, usually family medicine specialists. They often seemed uncertain as to the veracity of their own teaching on matters of childhood medicine. Does teething really cause fever in infants? Do iron drops really cause constipation in children?
At medical seminars — known as CMEs, for Continuing Medical Education — I developed a format I called “Pediatric Myths and Old Wives' Tales,” which seemed popular with attendees. Many in my audiences were family doctors or nurse practitioners; all were interested in the true facts around common health problems.
Does covering our ears in cold weather help prevent ear infections, for example? Is acne caused by not washing one’s face enough or by eating too much chocolate? Is gout, as many believe, the result of a lavish lifestyle of wine, women, and song?
We cling to our myths. It is hard to blame people for adhering to traditional folk remedies that appear to work, if we wait long enough. Homeopathy evolved in the 1800s; today, it is sometimes viewed as pseudoscience. However, back then, medics bled and leeched and purged people, performing primitive operations using whiskey as an anaesthetic. Some patients survived, and some were even cured.
Much of western medicine is built on concepts and practices arising out of the Greek and Roman cultures — cultures known for embodying their insights in myth. In classical Greek, the word mythos means story, while logos means something for which truth can be demonstrated. So, mythology translates as a story that is demonstrably true. Examples of myths with respectable connections to the medical profession are still with us; they include the Greco-Roman myths about Narcissus, Oedipus, and Ondine.
Narcissus was the son of a river god, who rejected the advances of a nymph. She then prayed to Venus, the goddess of love, who condemned Narcissus to an eternity of falling in love only with himself. Today we apply Narcissus’s name to the term narcissistic personality disorder to describe a specific psychiatric diagnosis. These are people who lack empathy and have a deep need for admiration, along with an inflated sense of their own importance. Like Narcissus, they are in love with themselves. Sound familiar?
Oedipus in Greek mythology was a king of Thebes who, despite his own efforts to the contrary, fulfilled the prophecy of the Oracle at Delphi. He unwittingly killed his father, then married his mother, and with her produced four more children. In modern psychiatry, sexual attraction to one’s mother has been given the name of “Oedipus Complex” — Sigmund Freud’s theory on the various ways that children identify with the parent of the same sex, which, when unresolved, is a possible cause of a personality disorder.
Ondine was a nymph who wedded a mortal named Palemon. When Palemon was later unfaithful, he was cursed by Ondine to breathe only while awake, and so never slept again. The myth still gives its name to a medical condition known as “Ondine’s curse” — a syndrome of “central apnoea” after spinal surgery, whereby patients can only breathe while awake and need ventilators to breathe while sleeping. Fortunately, neurosurgery patients with Ondine’s curse can take a low-pressure ventilator home and sleep while the machine supports their breathing.
Today, myth is considered inferior to evidence-based science. The Oxford dictionary defines myth as “a widely held but false notion” — yet we have often heard that “myth is more potent than reality.” What people believe is central to their upbringing, central to their culture and their experiences; it is influenced by their parents, teachers, clergy, and colleagues. Is that why myth continues to play such a significant role in medicine?
How many of the stories that surround us in the field of medicine are really myth, in the sense of “widely held but false,” and how many have a scientific basis? Do some notions widely thought to be medical myths actually have some relation to fact? Let us explore the interface where a number of our traditional beliefs about health meet evidence-based medicine.
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
1 VAMPIRES: ANY MEDICAL BASIS FOR THE MYTH?
THE CONCEPT OF A VAMPIRE predates Bram Stoker's tale of Count Dracula — probably by several centuries. Did vampires ever really exist?
In 1819, 80 years before the publication of Stoker's Dracula, John Polidori, an Anglo-Italian physician, published a novel called The Vampire. However, Stoker’s novel has been the benchmark for our descriptions of vampires. But how and where did this concept develop? It appears that the folklore surrounding the vampire phenomenon originated in that Balkan area where Stoker located his tale of Count Dracula.
Stoker never travelled to Transylvania or any other part of Eastern Europe. (The lands held by the fictional count would be in modern-day Romania and Hungary.) The writer was born and brought up in Dublin. He was a friend to Oscar Wilde and William Gladstone. He was both a liberal and a Home Ruler — in favour of home rule for Ireland. He turned to theatre, and became business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. It was his friendship with Ármin Vámbéry, a Hungarian writer, that led to his fascination with vampire folklore. He consulted Vámbéry in the writing of Dracula, whose main character was loosely fashioned on Vlad the Impaler.
But where did the myth of vampires come from? Like many myths, it is based partly in fact. A blood disorder called porphyria, which has been with us for millennia, became prevalent among the nobility and royalty of Eastern Europe. A genetic disorder, it becomes more common with inbreeding. Porphyria is a malfunction in the process of hemoglobin production. Hemoglobin is the protein molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body tissues. It seems likely that this disorder is the origin of the vampire myth. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as the “Vampyre Disease.”
Consider the symptoms of patients with porphyria:
Sensitivity to sunlight. Extreme sensitivity to sunlight, leading to facial disfigurement, blackened skin, and hair growth.
Fangs. In addition to facial disfigurement, repeated attacks of the disease results in gums receding, exposing the teeth — which look like fangs.
Blood drinking. Because the urine of persons with porphyria is dark red, folklore surmised that they were drinking blood. In fact, some physicians had recommended that these patients drink blood to compensate for the defect in their red blood cells — but this recommendation was for animal blood. It is likely that these patients, who only went out after dark, were judged to be looking for blood, and had fang-like teeth, led to folk tales about vampires.
Aversion to garlic. The sulfur content of garlic could lead to an attack of porphyria, leading to very acute pain. Thus, the aversion to garlic.
Reflections not seen in mirrors. In the mythology, a vampire is not able to look in a mirror, or cannot see their own reflection. The facial disfigurement caused by porphyria becomes worse with time. Poor oxygenation leads to destruction of facial tissues, and collapse of the facial structure. Patients understandably avoided mirrors.
Fear of the crucifix.
At the time of the Inquisition, it is reported that 600 “vampires” were burned at the stake. Some of these accused vampires were innocent sufferers of porphyria. Porphyria patients had good reason to fear the Christian faith and Christian symbols.
Acute attacks of the disease are associated with considerable pain and both mental and physical disturbance. This condition has been ascribed to King George III, although subsequent analysis has shed some doubt on porphyria as the cause of his “madness.”
Nowadays, with our scientific knowledge of the basis of porphyria, instead of fearing these folks, we can love and care for them. Porphyria remains incurable, and treatment is mainly supportive: pain control, fluids, and avoidance of certain drugs/chemicals that provoke acute attacks. Some success has been achieved with stem cell transplants.
Could Stoker have known of the existence of the medical condition of porphyria, and its link to vampire folklore? It was only in 1911, eight years before Stoker’s book appeared, that a German physician, Hans Gunther, classified the diseases of porphyria (there are several types). However, George Harley, of Harley Street, had described a patient with porphyria a few years earlier.
Through his gothic novel, Bram Stoker surely wins the prize for the best example of myth entangled with medicine!
NOTE: Stoker’s younger brother, Dr George Stoker, emigrated to Montreal, where the family established roots in Canada, mainly in Quebec but later in Kingston, Ontario. George’s great-grandson Dacre Stoker would one day write Dracula the Un-Dead, a sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel.
REFERENCES
Murray, P. From the shadow of Dracula: A life of Bram Stoker. Random House, 2004.
Gueco, M. Porphyria, the vampire disease that started the legend. KNOJI- Knowledge. 2009. https://knoji.com/porphyria-the-vampire-disease-that-started-the-legend.
Hift, R.J., T.J. Peters, P.A. Meissner. A review of the clinical presentation, natural history, and inheritance, of variegate porphyria: Its implausibility as the source of the “Royal Malady.” J ClinPathol, 2012, pp. 200–205.
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