Book of my good professor

What a lovely thing for you to discover Katarina. He must have been a very special person. I'm so glad you are now able to have all of his published works!

Cottagekaren@you probably misundertood, I have had them all for years, lol.
This is just English translation of the last one about which I have learned recently. Sounds good in English. I do not have this one :-)

Sounds a very interesting subject Katarina. Seriously considering ordering a copy.

Yes, Katarina, you have given me a recollection of one of my college professors. I was complaining to him about all that I had to stuff into my brain, some of which I thought ( the liberal arts) was wasting precious time which I could devote to my real interests in the sciences. He gave me some advice " Don't worry, it's just as important to know what you don't have to know." GREAT! I thought. I'm off the hook! I don't have to know that stuff that is irrelevant to my life's pursuit. Then what he truly meant sunk in. In order for me to make a decision of what not to know, first I had to know it. Now I find that all those things that I didn't have to know are giving me my life it's greatest joy.

A do apologize, I made mistake and I have already corrected it. Core wasn´t his final book, it was the second book of his trilogy. The third one "Immortality" he submitted to the publisher a week before his death.

Thank you, Loosestrife, that´s nice. In fact, I was always interested in too many topics, too (but I am not multi task personality). For instance, I remember, that a day before exams from anatomy (which are considered to be the hardest in medicine) I went to do excavations of Old Bronze Age cemetery, which I accidentally found and reported to museum, so archeologists invited me to participate. I studied medcine at the Commenius University, in Czechoslovakia, but research and my PhD I passed at the Jagellonian university in Cracow. Thanks to professor Szczeklik, who allowed me to do the research there, as one communist at the Institute for Postgraduate Studies in Slovakia prohibited to allow me to start PhD research. In Cracow I found, that this University doesn´t change its universal character since the times of Copernicus who, by the way, studied there, as well. Professor´s clinic was often visited by old artists. Nobel prize winner C. Milosz and Andrzej Vajda (art director of Japan drama Samurai) were patients there and we had piano concerts each holidays :-) Some were played by professor. He sometimes read his poetry to us, too. I like this universal education.

Your certainly right about anatomy (gross) exam though neuroanatomy was a son of a gun. I studied under anatomist Earl O. Butcher who was a contributor to Gray's Anatomy. First attended NYU Medical School (undergrad degree at Rutgers University) and after one year there transferred to Cornell Medical School order to partake of their MD-Phd program in conjunction with the Rockefeller Institute. I visited the Jagiellonian University in Krakow many years ago which was a very lucky city to be untouched by war as opposed to Warsaw which was flattened. Because of my interest in socialized medicine, I was very fortunate to be able to visit all of the eastern bloc countries (as they were formally known) as well as the then Soviet Union and Soviet Central Asia. After all that I find that now I have the time to enjoy the things that give me the most pleasure and happiness. I did not realize them before but I do now and most of them can be found in my home and the garden around it. I am glad that I have found them now and not earlier in life for now every minute with them is precious and very much appreciated.

Ach, Cornell University is one of the best among medical Universities in the US, isn´t it?

What do you mean socialized medicine?

P.S. Neuroanatomy was my favourite subject. I read Wilder Penfield asi a very young girl :-)

Medical and hospital care provided to all at low cost under the auspices of the state. Of course the systems vary from country to country. I found the then soviet system disappointingly top heavy with beaurocracy. I totally lost my interest in such a system. In the USA we have medical care infrastructure and services established and sustained by the free market system(which we are soon to loose). It almost seems that there is an MRI imaging center in every town for example. What is going to happen is that the government is going to move into this great and very complex system of medical care built and fed by capitalism. Everything will go well for a while until the money is no longer there or difficult to procure(via impediments provided by govermental beaurocracy) to sustain such a system and it will rapidly degrade both physical plant and the number of those required to make the healthcare system work. Instead of those MRI centers in every town one will find those centers hundreds of miles away from each other; I give just a simple example. What I am about to tell you was quite a coincidence. The next day upon my return to the USA I was reading letters to the editor of a local newspaper. In it was a lady complaining about her stay at a local hospital. Her complaint? It was that all she got for her meals in the hospital was GRAPE JAM for her bread. Lest to say my head went spinning after that while recollecting a patient told me that she had to pay for being provided with a privacy screen in a hospital I toured. But alas, those halcyon days of medical care in my country are soon to be over. I'm out of it just in time! Now back to my garden. I have to refill my hummer feeder.

Medical and hospital care provided to all at low cost under the auspices of the state - it doesn´t work, socialism is historical evidence. You will get cheap basic care for everybody and the most serious cases are lost in holes.

Let´s take example of MRI center, which you mentioned. Problem is not the number, but quality. I am not against MRI center in each town, if each radiologist will have to check 1000 patients per month. It is quantity, which cannot be crossed, as then the risk of mistake increases, on the other hand, such number is proof, that radiologist will be experienced and will make a correct diagnosis. Insurance companies should be those, who control this. Not government, not private business.

American system is overspending money. My brother was admitted to emergency for 24 hour observation, because he had blood in stool. When I saw the list of what was measured in his blood, they checked such incredible parameters, which at that moment were really seccondary and not important...that is wasting of money. But that should be controlled by those, who pay for those examinations.

The reason for this overshoot of diagnostics is a prophylactic one. American society is very litigious. Attempts made to place caps on malpractice awards and narrow the window on reason for litigation have for the most part failed, why? Most legislators in America are in fact lawyers and they are not about to do anything which would hurt their business and profit. Costs of bringing a malpractice case to trial are tremendous so right or wrong most cases are settled out of court adding to the cost of healthcare. Talk about monetary waste and the astronomical burden and pressure healthcare givers have to deal with in regards to the ever increasing potential for a lawsuit and forever rising malpractice insurance premiums? There have been pleas made saying if we are eventually going to have a government controlled health care system which would limit us in the things we must do in order to defend ourselves in case of a malpractice suit; can we also get some reasonable control over healthcare litigation? The answer has been so far, no way. But I must again get back to my garden to untangle a hopelessly tangled garden hose, check my latest blog. All of my best regards to you:)!

Whenever I speak with persons, who are involved in healthcare, but worked shortly or never in a real practice, when it comes to saving money, it finishes with malpractice as a propaganda factor. This factor was used also in Slovakia few years ago. It was used against physicians and nurses, who were ablated of human rights which the rest of society had. When they unified in that way, which was beyond imagination in this country, and they started official protest, all leftists in the government used malpractice as the main propaganda tool to divide healthcare workers and patients/people. I do not live in the USA and I do not know the figures which led you to the statement of "ever rising malpractie" or how much your country has to pay in global for lawsuits. I can speak just about experience from here. Ex-communists funded by the western institutions (by accident, lack of knowledge or malpractice? by the way, this is also bad investment) founded here Institute for Control of Malpractice. And people started to complain, while government quickly abolished hospitals, reduced beds in remaining ones, so HCP had tough times to deal with a problem "whom I will not admitt and didn t cause him a harm". As my boss once said, "Where do I put that old man? I cannot take him home with me as a garden dwarf." Our demogrpahics clearly states that population is growing old, but government saves money by reducing beds for old people who needs longer hospital stay due to slower recovery. People started to sue doctors for all sorts of things since propaganda based on one bone and three dogs alway works. Current statistics, which I know, as I worked partly for medical journals is, that from all cases of submitted lawsuits for malpractice only 20 % were relevant. Sorry fro this, but I am very sensitive on argument of malpractice as a source of financial problems in a healthcare. I worked in state hospitals for 16 years, 4 years I was medical journalist so I know something about the stage and also what is behaind the curtain. Not nice things, but I will always keep white flag with a red cross proudly above the head. Just to conclude this long discussion which came unintensiously out of proportion (lol) I wish to America a good choice for healthcare reform. It has one of the best medicine in the world, but not reachable by all. Ex-communistic (formally) countries have healthcare system, which is accesible (nore all less) to all, but highly specialized cases must be sent abroad, as all high specialists left this country partly for reasons mentioned above. Have a nice weekend.

Thank you, Steragram, for your comment. I am looking forward to hear your impressions from the book.

According to the Internet the translation is only available in USA and Canada.

I am sure Catharsis, the first of his books, was published in the U.K. as one professor from Southhampton brought it to our meeting in Cracow. Will check it out for you.

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3649941.html

This is Core, distributed by Amazon, delivery withn UK is free (lucky you!)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kore-Andrzei-Szczeklik/dp/161902019X

Thank you Katarina. Have found a very cheap copy so have ordered it - but it was the one you mentioned that really interested me.

Which one? I put here information on Kore. Did you order Katharsis? That book is very good, too. I even liked Katharsis more then Kore. I didn t read the third part, yet, as I have strange respect to that part. Professor sumbitted it to publisher a week before his death.

Amazon says it was Kore so I got it right after all!

Good!