Word: fatalism
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During a tuberculosis survey of Milan in 1958, schoolchildren had been given scratches on both arms: one for the tuberculin test, the other for histoplasmosis. This disease, which is like TB in the variety of its effects-ranging from an undetectable, mild infection to fulminating and rapidly fatal cases-is caused by a fungus, Histoplasma capsulatum. Unrecognized until 50 years ago, histoplasmosis is still often mistaken for, and mistakenly treated as, TB. It is now known to be especially common in the mid-continent states. But Milan's infection rate turned out to be an astonishing 62%, contrasted with...
...anti-clotting drugs regularly to cut down the danger of recurrences. But their blood takes so much longer to clot that dental and other surgeons are confronted with a dilemma: Should they keep a patient on the anticoagulant drug during an operation and run the risk of severe (perhaps fatal) bleeding, or should they take him off the drug for a few days and run the risk of clotting in an artery of the heart or brain? Such authorities as the New England Journal of Medicine and the A.M.A. Journal have been advising surgeons to "play it safe," as they...
...18th century Enlightenment, with its indiscriminate, omnivorous, ravenous appetite for all facts about all nature. Every blessed thing on earth (Ben had little theological curiosity) he wrote about, asked about, or collected facts about-vacuum jars, the "humors" produced by yellow fever, machines for producing static electricity (fatal to some rats), systems of government and ventilation, the geology of Pennsylvania, the weather, the making of glass, the weaving of cloth, and the proper way to build a fort. When he was not advertising muskets for sale he was procuring them for his Pennsylvania militia, drawing up the order of companies...
...inch shorter than his right, and the resulting seesaw effect tended increasingly to bring the spasms back. By 1954 he was a cripple on crutches. He hobbled into New York's Hospital for Special Surgery. Doctors tried a delicate spinal fusion. It failed, and Kennedy contracted a near-fatal staphylococcus infection. Another operation four months later was successful, and novocain treatments broke the cycle of muscle spasms. The President still must wear a quarter-inch riser in the heel of his left shoes and sneakers, and a small brace to support his back muscles...
...Gann's own career as a commercial pilot, reaching back to the days of open-cockpit biplanes "and the strangely pleasant odor of wood and shellacked fabric, of which our airplanes were made." It is a testament to lost friends. Every chapter is darkened with the memory of fatal crashes. The dedication lists 397 "old comrades with wings forever folded...