Category Archives: medicine

Horsing around

Talk about plans going awry…

A Hawaiian hospital has restated its rules on pets after a man took a horse up in a lift in a bid to cheer up a sick relative with his favourite steed.

Man and beast were stopped by security guards only after reaching the third floor, after apparently passing through the lobby unchallenged.

That’s not actually the part of the story that made it interesting to me, this is:

The patient was allowed to see them but it turned out to be the wrong horse.

Can you imagine? You go to all the trouble to take a [tag]horse[/tag] to a [tag]hospital[/tag] and then you take the wrong horse?

I’m all about taking animals to visit people who’re sick (provided they want to be visited by critters, of course). This reminded me of a program where, instead of dogs, they took exotic trained animals to nursing homes to visit with the residents. One of these animals was an adorable miniature horse. Do the therapeutic benefits of animal companionship outweighed the potential psychological damage of walking a very tiny horse past dementia patients? It was a very successful program so it must have been okay, but you still have to wonder…

a fine example of a trichobezoar

CNN is currently running a story, “Doctors untangle the strange case of the giant hairball.” The story does have a nice photograph, but it’s not all that informative.

There’s a rather fine example of a [tag]bezoar[/tag] (a [tag]human hairball[/tag]) at the [tag]National Museum of Health and Medicine[/tag], in the Human Body, Human Being exhibit. If you don’t want to make the trip to [tag]Walter Reed[/tag], the Museum has an online exhibit, “Hairballs: Myths and Realities behind some Medical Curiosities.”

Hours of fun for the whole family! (Really).