Last July 20, my lighthearted column entitled “Going in Style” about preparing for death ran in this paper. Today, I’m going to take a more serious look at death, but from the perspective of someone witnessing the death of a loved one….

Pharmaceutical companies are private (but publicly invested) firms in business to make money for themselves and their investors. I think we all get that. But they also make medications designed to treat sickness and disease, a public health…

Polypharmacy is the excessive or unnecessary use of medications, both prescribed and over the counter (OTC) ones. Polypharmacy can affect anyone but is most commonly seen in older adults. Other risk factors include having more than one doctor…

Acute myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, also known as the myocardium. It may cause chest pain, shortness of breath, heart pounding (palpitations), and, rarely, fainting. Patients commonly report flu-like symptoms (such as fever,…

Ever wonder why we have wisdom teeth? For most of us, they are nothing but trouble. If you join the U.S. Navy to work in submarines, you must have all four wisdom teeth removed before sailing. But wisdom teeth are just molars, like all the other…

You know, medicine is a serious business. Most of my columns deal with heavy issues, often involving life and death concerns. So today and next week, I thought I’d lighten things up. Yogi Berra was known for some hilarious yet unintentional…

Peter Galvin, MD
The thymus gland, located in the central chest behind the sternum, or breastbone, and directly in front of the heart (anatomically in the anterior superior mediastinum), had for many centuries been considered an anatomical…

The neural tube and plate are responsible for the development of the cranium (brain and skull) and spine (spinal cord and backbone) in a human fetus. The neural plate completes its formation and closes very early in pregnancy, usually by 26 to 28…

Pardon the punny title, it comes from an old “Looney Tunes” Bugs Bunny cartoon (how and why I still remember that probably 55 or 60 years after I last watched it, I have no idea). Cirrhosis, however, is not a laughing matter. It occurs when…

More Americans died in the Civil War than all our other wars combined. It is estimated that about 750,000 people died in the war, and about 2/3, or 400,000 died from diseases. What medical records we have from the war are almost exclusively from…