Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Army’s Historic Image Collection Going Online

The US Army’s National Museum of Health and Medicine stores a gigantic digitized archive of prints and photos from the Civil War to Vietnam. The head archivist of the museum now started a project to make the collection available to the general public through Flickr. The initial set so far contains about 800 images, but thousands more should be coming soon.

More from Wired Science blog…

Link @ Flickr

Images: Top: Base Hospital #33. Portsmouth, England. Patient with jaw bridgework. Dental laboratory. World War 1.

Side: Soldier and horse with gas mask. World War 1.

**This post was originally published at Medgadget.com**

Cute Kid And Animal Photos

My brother-in-law is a police sargeant and amateur photographer. His wife is an elephant keeper. Chuck took a headshot of me in the past, and I just couldn’t resist sharing some of his recent work with you. Which one do you like best?

Halloween Party Photos & A Failed Costume

Doug and Heather

Doug and Heather

True story: three years ago in New York City I decided to attend a Halloween costume party dressed as Jackie O. My husband dutifully accompanied me as a secret service agent. I wore a mauve, tweed suit with a three-strand pearl necklace, large sunglasses, a pill box hat, white gloves, and a brown wig. We entered the party with much fanfare. I was quite pleased until someone approached and said,

“Great costume. You look JUST like Monica Lewinsky!”

I started a new diet the next day.

This year I decided to be something that no one would mistake – a vampire from the Underworld movie series. My husband was supposed to join me as a co-vampire, but this year he dug in his heels and decided to do his own thing. What could be better than a vampire escort?

Steve chose to be “Lad Armstrong,” Lance’s older brother. He wore bicycle shorts and a helmet and wrist guards, with an ankle bracelet. He claimed to have taught Lance everything he knows about cycling, but is still sore about him stealing his anklet idea and developing it into a livestrong bracelet cult.

Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy some photos from the party. Someone’s dad dressed up as a flasher. I thought it was pretty clever. Unfortunately my camera was not fast enough to capture the goods during a flash. So I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

I did have a friend help me with my vampire look. Hope you all had a safe and entertaining Halloween! What did you dress up as?

Vampire Val & Lad Armstrong

Vampire Val & Lad Armstrong

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles