Ozark Oddments: Rabid researchers...

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Rabid researchers...

I work on medical manuscripts. Papers about clinical studies of therapies for various ailments; case reports of unusual illnesses in patients and how the patient was treated (one poor soul in a recent paper died from a massive infection he got after being bitten by his household rabbit; another person died from a parasite he got after being barbed by a catfish); basic research studies (usually involving an animal) to find causes for problems and how to stop it. And buried deep in a complicated manuscript comes this gem...

"The premise.... was rabidly translated into clinical therapeutic...."

Now I've lost it and hysterics are a possibility as I contemplate the mental picture of wild-haired wild-eyed, researchers foaming at the mouth while they chase after hapless patients brandishing syringes dripping with their new drug-combination therapy.

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"