Poor Historian Research Articles

Giovanni Battista Doni's Interpretation of the Greek Modal System

Humanists were generally poor historians of the ancient world. Their project of applying ancient learning and ideals to contemporary situations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often impeded a disinterested search for historical truth. Giovanni Battista Doni, like Franchino Gaffurio, Henricus Glareanus, Girolamo Mei, and Francisco de Salinas before him, gained his reputation as a promoter of ancient Greek tonal systems as a basis for modern musical composition. But, like these predecessors, Doni was also imbued with a passion for research and scholarship. In a book he drafted in the early 163os and left unfinished, the de' generi e de' modi della musica,' he indulged in pure scholarship before becoming embroiled in debates about reforming modern music. His published Compendio del de' generi e de' modi della musica (Rome, 1635) was not a true compendium of the unpublished treatise but a bowdlerization with an obvious reformist agenda that left the scholarly substance behind. Consequently we must go to the unpublished Trattato to understand Doni's view of the ancient Greek tonal

Fracture of the cuboid in children. A source of leg symptoms

We report eight cases of fracture of the cuboid in seven children under four years of age, collected during a two-year period. There was no history of trauma in five of the patients. This fracture is rarely diagnosed and has probably been under-reported. Small children are poor historians and difficult to examine, and early radiographs may be normal or have only subtle abnormalities. Cuboid fracture should be considered in the differential diagnosis of limping toddlers, and a bone scan may be needed to confirm the diagnosis earlier than radiography. These fractures heal completely, without sequelae. Treatment in a short-leg walking cast is recommended, primarily for reasons of comfort.

The South Inflamed! The Case of Henry Wirz

To the Editor.— In his article, Skolnick 1 stated that perhaps the first physician to be convicted of war crimes was Confederate Captain Henry Wirz, MD, commandant of the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville. I wish to take issue with Skolnick's comments regarding this individual, for it would appear that Skolnick is a poor historian and has not taken the opportunity to investigate the facts that are readily available in the literature. Captain Wirz was, in fact, Major Henry Wirz. Conferring on him the degree of doctor of medicine is a gross inaccuracy. Although in his youth he was interested in medicine, he arrived in this country in 1849 from his native Switzerland. He was employed as a physician's assistant around Kentucky for a brief period of time, and subsequently offered some medical assistance on a plantation in Louisiana. After entering the service as an infantry officer, he was wounded,

Why High Court Judges Make Poor Historians: The Corporations Act Case and Early Attempts to Establish a National System of Company Regulation in Australia

Why High Court Judges Make Poor Historians: The Corporations Act Case and Early Attempts to Establish a National System of Company Regulation in Australia

Do You Know These Patients? High-Risk Pediatric Encounters

Who are the patients we come to identify as so troublesome that when we see their name on the day's schedule we hope they might cancel, or we feel tired before we get half way through the day at the thought that we have to face them? What is it about them that makes caring for them less gratifying and more difficult? There has been a regrettable tendency to blame the patient for breakdowns in doctor-patient communication and to shift the burden of responsibility from the physician to the patients. We are all familiar with pejorative descriptions such as "the patient is a poor historian," "the patient is uncooperative," "this is a difficult patient," "this is a demanding patient," or "this is the patient I would most like to refer to my least favorite colleague." There are patients who are unpopular with all physicians, and then there are special sensitivities that make an individual physician react negatively to a particular group of patients. Physicians may be insightful and perceptive of their own responses to other individuals and may have excellent communication skills, yet they are still only human. They are not perfect and not infrequently find themselves confronted by individual patients or families who annoy them, frustrate them, or disappoint them.

The Study of International Relations: A Historian's View

When I was first asked to write this study, I was struck almost immedi?ately by the thought that, in contrast to International Relations specialists, historians are almost never required to write about their own subject as a discipline. International Relations specialists, on the other hand, never seem to cease doing so. Whereas the poor historian, dull fellow that he often is, simply gets on with the task of telling his story (and ‘history’ and ‘story’, significantly, are the same word in many languages), the International Relations specialist always seems to feel the need to justify himself. What then explains his apparent lack of self-confidence? Nagging doubts about intellectual respectability? A lack of consensus about what his subject is really about? A growing scepticism, not to say cynicism, regarding its usefulness? My own feeling is that all these factors are indeed involved — yet, given the nature of the subject, they are bound to be, so that it is only proper that from time to time it should be examined in volumes such as this or in Light and Groom’s splendid International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory.1

Teaching the difficult interview in a required course on medical interviewing.

A module dealing with the difficult patient interview is part of a required medical interviewing course for second-year students. Using a classification of difficult doctor-patient interactions, students identify what goes wrong during interviews with simulated patients and then learn techniques to remedy these problems in order to obtain reliable medical histories. Skills taught to the students include identifying the specific problem within an interview and recognizing and using their own feelings as information about the patient. Attitudes encouraged in students include recognizing that the source of the problem may be the patient, the interviewer, or both; that the physician rather than the patient may be the so-called "poor historian"; and that the goal of managing a difficult patient interview is not counseling but rather the acquisition of accurate and precise information.

Who Is the Poor Historian?

We cluster in the hall on rounds. A medication nurse pushes her cabinet around us on her way down the hall, while the breakfast lorry closes in from the other direction. The intern begins his presentation: Mr Blank is a 52-year-old man who presents with abdominal pain... the patient is a historian. We learn that this sick person claims to have a number of symptoms and he is apparently taking several medications. The intern adds that the patient's compliance is poor, he doesn't seem to understand his illness, and he is, after all, a poor historian. Having dispensed with the preliminaries, the house officer moves on to reporting the patient's physical findings and the initial laboratory data. At this point he drops all qualifiers: the magnesium level does not seem to be 2.2, it is 2.2. Once again, we have left the patient and gone on to his biochemistry

Unsuspected Esophageal Foreign Bodies in Adults with Upper Airway Obstruction

Esophageal foreign bodies rarely cause respiratory distress in adults. While it is well known that upper airway obstruction can occur with esophageal foreign bodies in children, the otorlaryngologic literature mentions little of this problem in older patients. Two adults with airway obstruction from unsuspected esophageal foreign bodies are described, with emphasis on the problems of diagnosis and management. The possibility of an unsuspected esophageal foreign body should be kept in mind during the evaluation of respiratory distress in an adult, especially in one who is a poor historian or has a history of a psychiatric disorder. Early endoscopic removal in the treatment of choice, although esophagotomy may be required.

Hemorrhagic Corneal Pannus Simulating a Spontaneous Expulsive Hemorrhage

An elderly, Spanish-speaking patient, who was a poor historian, presented with a hemorrhagic corneal condition that was mistakenly diagnosed as a spontaneous expulsive choroidal hemorrhage leading to enucleation of the globe. The enucleation specimen revealed pathologically a diffuse hemorrhagic pannus without corneal perforation in an eye with end-stage chronic angle closure glaucoma. The absence of clear-cut antecedent trauma, corneal ulceration, and pain at the time of presentation should have militated against the mistaken diagnosis. Diagnostic tests to establish more securely the diagnosis of expulsive hemorrhage are summarized.

Case profile: carcinoma of prostate presenting as large bladder tumor

A fifty-nine-year-old man had gross painless hematuria of four days' duration. The patient was a poor historian because of organic brain syndrome and Korsakoff psychosis, but he denied obstructive voiding symptoms . Rectal examination revealed a moderately enlarged, benign-feeling prostate . Urinalysis revealed bloody urine with full field white and red blood cells and a few bacteria . Urine culture and sensitivity were sterile . Serum creatinine was 1 .5 mg./100 ml., and liver function studies were normal. Acid phosphatase and alkaline phosphatase were normal . Intravenous pyelogram revealed a normal right collecting system with nonvisualization of the left collecting system and a large filling defect occupying most of the bladder (Fig . 1). Cys-

Alveolar soft-part sarcoma of the orbit.

ALVEOLAR LVEOLAR soft-part sarcoma is a primary malignant neoplasm that very rarely occurs in the orbit. The present report concerns a histologically proven case of alveolar soft-part sarcoma in a patient presenting with unilateral exophthalmos. Report of a Case Clinical History. —A 55-year-old white factory worker was first seen on March 8, 1966, complaining of a red right eye of approximately three weeks' duration. The patient's family history was noncontributory. His medical history revealed prior episodes of pneumonia, liver disease, traumatic fracture of vertebrae, and a chronic excess ethanol intake. The patient, a poor historian, stated that the right eye had been quite red and was somewhat larger for several weeks (Fig 1). He was unaware of the proptosis until questioned about it. At the time of examination, the patient's visual acuity was 20/20 in each eye without correction. Exophthalmometer readings revealed 28 mm on the right side and 22

CHLORINE BLEACH EFFECT ON ESOPHAGUS

To the Editor .—In answer to Dr. Chandler's letter: Prior to the study in question, we were unable to find any documented case of esophageal stricture following liquid chlorine bleach ingestion, in the literature. Personal communications with many otolaryngologists, having seen large numbers of ingestions, failed to reveal any history of stricture. This study reported 393 children who reportedly had ingested bleach. Half of these received no treatment, and no strictures were found in any of the patients. It has been our experience that the patient attempting suicide by ingestion is a poor historian. The two cases reported above may represent ingestion of chlorine bleach, chlorine bleach and some other substance, or some other substance alone. We would like to urge anyone having additional documented evidence of esophageal stricture following household liquid chlorine bleach ingestion to report it, either in the literature or to us. If this matter can be

Political Causes

It is not easy to distinguish between cultural, economic and political causes of the War of Independence in Spanish America and separate them into three closed compartments. Then there are psychological obstacles. There is a feeling among many Latin Americanists that this topic is exhausted and further research will add nothing new. Others want a complete revision of the usual causes cited and demand more documentary study. They believe that the standard causes are based on too scanty research, mostly done in the last century from incomplete sources. Furthermore, there are the rising nationalists and indigenistas of our century, most of them poor historians, who insist that the role of the Indians and mestizos was much more important than historians have accepted. They consider past historians racially and economically prejudiced. Such a trend is especially strong in Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba, the three countries that have faced a real social revolution. And, unfortunately, history often follows the flag.