Physician heal thyself

So, once again the Gnome is spending his working days discussing and writing about bowel disease at an international medical conference.

For many physicians of course, conferences are a good excuse to get away from the family to play golf, go shopping, or sleep with attractive young pharmaceutical sales reps.

Others though do actually contribute to our global scientific knowledge by publishing short abstracts on their clinical work. These abstracts are then collated into a very large book (with a very small font) designed specifically so the Gnome can experience both eye strain and headaches from trying to pick out those of genuine scientific interest.

One does occasionally come across an unintentional bit of humour to lighten the mood. An abstract presented here in Philadelphia described patients who took a drug but had a bad reaction to it. The Gnome assumes the author meant to say '10% of patients were were unable to tolerate the treatment', but what was written was '10% of patients were intolerable'.

The Gnome knows lots of doctors, and he bets every single one would say that percentage was way too low...