Photography A person’s lifetime medication consumption has a familiar and predictable pattern. The more a person ages, the greater their number of taken medication. However, the public behavior in initiating medication has been changed compared to thir…
Many drug ads in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s would offend today. In an ad for Valium, we are told that the woman pictured (“Jan”) is “psychoneurotic” because she is unmarried at age 35. “You…
The 20th century was an explosion of scientific innovation and discovery. The success of chemistry, physics and biology to produce things such as antibiotics, radiography and genetic analysis could not be ignored. Medicine is not now, nor has it ever b…
An installation to explore the impact of medications in daily life Bob is a typical patient at the pharmacy with a chronic illness. Bob, along with 30 other random patients whom I followed in the year 2017, had been picked up to explore the number of m…
The American Medical Association (AMA) has become unmoored in history, seemingly unaware that both racism and the war on drugs are no longer tolerated by society. A confluence of recent activities and events having to do with their stance on medical ca…
“How dare you suggest I/my son is not sick?” “Stop invalidating the lived experiences of millions of people!” “Able-bodied people like you have no right to report this.” “How dare you suggest my medication has …
Ketamine (colloquially called “K,” “Special K,” or “Vitamin K”) is a potent, dissociative anesthetic. More specifically, it is a nonselective NMDA antagonist that initiates a wide array of physiological effects, alre…
When the “opioid crisis” is mentioned, most people think of heroin, prescription pills like oxycodone, or — more recently — the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Fewer people would think of novel opioids like tianeptine, although an incre…
“My grandchildren are appalled.” So said the elderly patient I saw yesterday. This lovely woman came to our practice for the treatment of extreme pain. At 99-years of age, she has survived multiple cancers and their associated treatments. S…
I look forward to clinic days. I thoroughly enjoy meeting with patients, hearing how they’re doing, and helping them to feel better – even if, on occasion, the only thing I can do to help is to listen. Yesterday was a clinic day. In the middle of…
