Category Archives: Uncategorized

Court Rules Wagner’s Music Dangerous to Health

I written about the medical danger to health associated with Parsifal, now a British court has added Die Walküre to the list of hazardous Wagner operas. Violist Christopher Goldscheider convinced the court that playing in a cramped orchestra pit during a 2012 rehearsal of the opera subjected him to a noise level which resulted in “acoustic…


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Quotations of the Day

There’s nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in. Will Rogers One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. Sir William Osler


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Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

An understanding of statistics is essential if a physician, or any interested party, is to understand the medical literature. Alas asking a typical doctor to evaluate statistical data is like giving a scalpel to an accountant and asking him to perform a coronary bypass. My last post on sodium intake gave an example of inadequate…


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The Salinity Obsession

Many physicians and those charged with regulating the nation’s health have been obsessed with salt since Lot’s wife was transformed into a pillar of the stuff. On March 7, 2018  the JAMA published online a well performed study of sodium intake, the investigators used 24 hour urinary sodium excretion as a marker of intake, which documents…


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Mad Max Meets Mozart – 2004

This is a review that I wrote in 2004. It’s been buried deep within this site. I decided to copy it to a more visible spot. Things can always get worse. Consider Don Giovanni at the English National Opera. I was at the October 4th performance. Calixto Bieito was the director. He is from Barcelona….


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Tutto Verdi: Don Carlo

Parma’s Tutto Verdi presentation of Don Carlo was sent up the road to the Teatro Comunale di Modena. I suppose this was appropriate as this opera has more versions than a tenors has phobias. But one of them is called the Modena Version, which obviously was the one presented here. It’s the 5 act opera in…


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Statins For the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease

The use of statins (drugs which lower blood cholesterol) for the primary prevention of CV disease has been controversial since the drugs became available almost 30 years ago. Primary prevention is the prevention of a disease which the patient does not have, eg a stroke or a heart attack. Secondary prevention is the prevention of…


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More On Screening Mammography

Though screening mammography starting at age 40 to 50 has been the standard of care for more than a third of a century, we are still sorting out the correct way to use it. The technique is another example of the ready-fire-aim approach that characterizes the introduction of new approaches to diagnosis and treatment by…


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Recording of the Week: Leonard Warren 10 CD Set

Leonard Warren (1911-60) was the greatest baritone I ever heard. In the major Verdi parts no one else was close. He had everything. A voice of immense size, incomparable high notes, and a velvet control over his great instrument. He made his career at the Met, appearing at that great house 657 times between 1938 and…


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Sergei Lemeshev

Sergei Lemeshev (1902-77) and Ivan Kozlovsky were the two great Russian tenors of the first half of the 20th century. I’ve already covered the latter and promised to get around to Lemeshev later. Well, later is today. Lemeshev was born to a peasant family in the Kalininsky District of Tver Oblast in the Russian Empire. He was…


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