.KEYWORD ppbookmonth0499
.FLYINGHEAD PALMPOWER BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB
.TITLE Put a doctor in your pocket: a guide to medical and health-related Palm device resources
.DEPT
.SUMMARY They’re not doctors and as far as we know, neither has even played one on TV. In fact, we’ve heard unsubstantiated rumors that they both grow faint at the sight of blood. However, lack of professional experience, training, and general common sense never stopped our intrepid columnists before. So it is with just such aplomb and a complete lack of formal knowledge that our unflagging writers dissect some of the vast medical and disease-related resources available to Palm device owners.
.AUTHOR Craig Froehle and John Swain
We’re not doctors and we don’t even play them on TV. In fact, we both go faint at the sight of blood. However, lack of professional experience, training, and general common sense never stopped us before. So it is with just such aplomb and a complete lack of formal knowledge that we dissect some of the vast medical and disease-related resources available to Palm device owners.
.H1 Medicine in Literature
Throughout history, the foundation of society has been altered time and time again by the devastation of disease and the prevailing conditions of medical knowledge. Man’s inability to permanently remove himself as a consumable on the display shelves of the food chain has given many writers meat for thought and the foundation for some great works of literature.
.H2 The Journal of the Plague Year
Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague. You have to respect an organism that could so radically redefine the course of European civilization. Empires, fell, economies collapsed, millions perished — all because of a determined bacterium. For Daniel Defoe, Y. Pestis proved too tempting a character study to ignore.
Set in 1665, Journal of the Plague Year is a fictionalized telling of a summer outbreak of the plague in bustling London. Defoe, considered by many to be one of the first British novelists, managed the difficult task of maintaining the truthful elements of fact and the compelling line of fiction. Though clearly a fictional work, Defoe artfully manages a unique telling of the epidemiology of an outbreak.
Written as a firsthand recounting, Defoe adds a resonance of truth to his novel by imparting statistical information on the spread of the infectious disease. He carefully details the development of the infection, its rapid spread and the subsequent devastation caused by its passing. Throughout the novel, the reader is provided with grisly accounts of the modern medical practices of the times.
Though Defoe has been criticized repeatedly (both by his contemporaries and subsequent generations), for his overly passionate language, The Journal of the Plague Year provides a unique insight into the perception of infectious disease in the 18th century.
.H2 Iron Peter
At the close of the 20th century, it would be impossible to discuss infectious disease for any length of time without confronting the AIDS epidemic. Palm device owners have a unique opportunity to read an outstanding work by a contemporary writer who takes a darkly comedic look at the AIDS.
In a book some critics have called "The Animal Farm of the AIDS era", Charles Ortleb takes a comic look at the AIDS establishment and the effect of the HIV-AIDS theory on gay life in the nineties in Iron Peter, a satirical novel.
Peter, a beautiful young man who arrives in New York City fresh out of college, is determined to "assassinate" the AIDS epidemic. In the course of his research efforts in both the library and the real-life of bars, he realizes that the AIDS scientists, the AIDS activists, and the entire AIDS establishment are hooked on a false theory that HIV=AIDS; that theory is leading them nowhere. To make matters worse, the AIDS scientists, in league with the pharmaceutical companies, are prescribing highly toxic drugs (AZT, DDI, etc.) to AIDS patients, thus adding thousands of unnecessary deaths to the epidemic. When Peter meets a renegade heiress whose peak experiences were Woodstock and Watergate, the gay and the (sort of) straight world are united in a crusade to expose this AIDSgate scandal to the world. Published by Electron Press, Inc, Iron Peter is available in Palm device-ready Doc format
.H1 Medical references
Few subjects have received the degree of attention in the handheld community as medicine and health have. Several Web sites exist that are entirely devoted to the use of handheld devices in medical practice, and a large number of physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals have created an ever-growing number of health-related documents in Palm device-compatible formats. The following are but a small sample of this abundance.
For the layperson (i.e. non-physician), many health-related documents exist. For example, a Doc-format listing of essential vitamins and minerals, as well as their sources and properties, has been assembled by R. Jones. Jim Thompson created a listing of common hand injuries in a plain text file, and a plain text guide to common pills for pain control was created by J. Leonardelli. Mary Jo Sminkey has created some extremely handy First Aid & CPR references, and these are available in Doc format.
So, the next time you twist your ankle after stepping on that rusty nail while running away from the poisonous snake that just bit you, make sure you have your Palm Connected Organizer handy. Even if you don’t have one of these documents loaded on it, you can always flash out an SOS with your backlight.
For physicians who depend on highly technical information to do their job, there’s a virtual cornucopia of references available. Tim Warner has created a number of medical references, including a Nursing Diagnoses Guide and a "Quick and Dirty Drug Book", both in Doc format. Jim Thompson has also created both Doc and plain text versions of his DSM-IV Axes reference document. Listings for the ICD-9 Psychological Coding System have been created by a number of Palm device owners and are primarily available in Doc format. Finally, the Hippocratic Oath represents the essence of medicine for many physicians, and is named after the Greek physician, Hippocrates the Great, who lived around 1250 B.C. It is available in text format.
These are just a tiny sampling of the tremendous variety of medicine-related literature and technical and everyday medical references that are available for you, the Palm device owner. But be warned
